Maple Leaf

Tattoo art has embraced many leaf motifs, one of the most popular being the Japanese maple, a symbol of time passing. The design often conveys the leaves as floating, carried on the wind or in the water. In Japan, it’s also the symbol of lovers. In some Japanese tattoo designs, canopies of maple leaves float over shoulders and drift over the torso.

A single leaf or a multitude of leaves are also potent symbols of regeneration and resurrection as they cycle through the seasons. In the temperate zones of the world, the changing seasons are most dependably marked by the transformation of the leaves of deciduous trees.  Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter are potent reminders of the circle of life, from birth to death. From the plump buds of spring, to the edible green leaves of summer, to their dramatic autumnal death in a blazing show of color, leaves are vivid reminders to us all of the life-and-death cycle of all living things. Nothing so thrills us with the sense of fresh hope and new beginnings as when leaves are budding in springtime. Everything is there waiting to burst out and begin a new life. Then follows full-leaf summer, when a broad canopy of leaves is a shady escape from the heat. The glories of a colorful autumn are the leaves last gasp before the dormancy of winter. A tree losing the last of its leaves in the cold winds of autumn, to be stripped bare for the onset of winter has a poignancy that has long stirred the souls of poets, philosophers and men alike. The parallels of our own human lifetime are all too obvious. We could do worse than to meditate upon a rotting leaf on a damp forest path, often just a ghost of its former self. ‘This too will pass,” said the Buddha.