This blog post is about the book “The Book of Ichigo Ichie” written by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles.

How many times are we truly present in the moment ? We seem to forever vacillating between past and future and only a few times in a day, we seem to be able to be truly present in the moment. This book is an invitation to the reader to enjoy the present moment.

On a day to day basis, we might experience a gamut of emotions. Often these emotions are relating to past or future. In that sense, we are robbing ourselves of enjoying all there is to our lives, each moment. We cease to enjoy the present moment and unfortunately the present moment gets logged in to past stack.

The book starts with authors describing their experience in a Japanese tea house where they encounter the inscription

Ichigo Ichie

that translates to

Once a meeting

In this moment, an opportunity. This tells us that each meeting, everything we experience, is a unique treasure that will never be repeated in the same way again. So if we let it slip away without enjoying it, the moment will be lost forever

The first written example of ichigo ichie is in a notebook belonging to the tea master Yamanoue Soji in 1588. What we wrote was this:

Treat your host as if the meeting were going to occur only once in your life

Loosely translated to our own lives, treat every moment with yourself and others as though it is only going to occur once.

A Tibetan legend, “Gates of Shambhala”, illustrates this concept. A hunter when given a chance to enter a mystical land lets the opportunity slip by and is forever hunting for another chance.

Kaika and Mankai

The book goes on to then elaborate on the following formula, that essentially says that when our day to day reason for our joyous life meets a moment that inspires us and we do something about if for a long time, the whole journey is transformative for us as well as others.

Ikigai - Discovering something we become passionate about and which also comes easily to us. Kaika - is setting aside other people’s demands to make room for our passion, allowing the reason we feel we were put on the earth to begin to blossom. Mankai - is to stay on that path, to be patient and to keep dreaming until we obtain Mankai

If we discover our talent, open ourselves up to it, and make it a priority in our lives, our passion will be able to develop, leading to our happiness and that of others.

Four Basic Emotions and Time

I liked the idea of the way one can view emotions with respect to time dimension and then we can immediately try to bring it to the present once we are aware of it

Zensations

The teachings of this Japanese version of Buddhism give us many opportunities to incorporate ichigo ichie into our daily lives.

Just sit and see what happens. Our spiritual shortsightedness often causes us to look far away—in space and time—for what’s really right in front of us. Zen teaches us to simply sit and embrace the moment, with no further ambitions than this. If we are with other people, we celebrate their company as a gift.
Savor this moment as if it were your last breath. You can live only one day at a time, and no one can be certain that they will wake up the next morning. So let’s not postpone happiness. The best moment of your life is always this one.
Avoid distractions. An old proverb says that a hunter who takes aim at two prey at once will kill none. The same thing happens when we try to follow a conversation or read a book at the same time as checking our phone. Zen teaches us to do one thing at a time, as if it were the most important thing in the world. If you do it that way, it undoubtedly will be.
Free yourself from everything that isn’t essential. One can recognize an expert traveler more by what they leave at home than what they carry in their suitcase. Life is a thrilling adventure through which it’s best to travel light, so every day, whenever you feel overburdened, ask yourself, What can I let go of?
Be your own friend. Rather than comparing yourself to others and worrying about what other people think, assume that you are unique in the world. As the celloist Pau (Pablo) Casals said in a poem written for children: You are a miracle, and there has never been—nor will there ever be—anyone like you.
Celebrate imperfection. If not even nature in all its complexity, with all its births and deaths, is perfect, then why should you be? Each failure is a sign that you should take a different path. Each flaw is an invitation to polish a diamond. If you have the will to improve, then it’s perfect to be imperfect.
Practice compassion. From a Buddhist perspective, feeling sorry for someone doesn’t mean feeling pity but rather a profound empathy that allows us to travel toward the situation of the other to understand their motivations and, if necessary, their mistakes. Each person acts according to the moment of personal growth in which they find themselves. Even when they behave in hateful ways, it’s the best they can do with what they have.
Let go of your expectations. Making predictions, waiting for certain things to happen, is a guaranteed way to kill the moment. Ichigo ichie is experienced with the uncluttered mind taught by Zen.

Dukkha and Mono No aware

Dukkha

The Buddhist concept of dukkha is often incorrectly translated as “suffering.” A more accurate way of translating it would be: “that slight anxiety and dissatisfaction that all living beings constantly feel inside, because we know that change is inevitable.”

Throughout our lives, we often fight to try and escape this feeling rather than accept it. For example, addictions are a form of escapism that we use to calm our dukkha.

Contemporary society offers many ways to escape from reality: increasingly immersive video games, internet entertainment, drugs and alcohol, and so forth. Especially when we go through a crisis or suffer a loss, we seek ways to distance ourselves from that sense of impermanence that’s so characteristic of our existence.

Nothing lasts forever, neither good nor bad. Accepting this fact is the key to taking full advantage of the sublime moments life bestows on us and to not losing hope when we go through a rough patch.

Mono No Aware

The Japanese expression mono no aware is used to express the appreciation of beauty and translates literally as “being aware of the passage of time.” We might describe mono no aware as “bittersweet,” in reference to the strong emotion that overcomes us when we truly realize that the nature of what we are seeing, smelling, hearing, and feeling in the present is ephemeral.

There are other expressions that we come across that are similar to Ikigai, such as Memento Mori and Carpe Diem. Most of these expressions view our lives as transient and remind us that death is inevitable. Ikigai puts a positive spin and talks of life instead of death.

Ceremony of Attention

The authors spend five chapters exploring the connection between five senses and the tea ceremony. Each can be read leisurely so that we remind ourselves to be present in all five senses in every moment of our lives. Easier said than done and hence authors provide a few suggestions at the end of each chapter to bring each of our senses to the present moment

Ten Rules of Ichigo Ichie

Don’t postpone special moments. Like the hunter in the story at the beginning of the book who finds the gate to Shambhala open, each opportunity presents itself only once. If you don’t embrace it, it’s lost forever. Life is a question of now or never.
Live as if this were going to happen only once in your life. The advice given by the tea master half a millennium ago still holds. That’s why it’s inspiring to greet and say goodbye to our loved ones with “Ichigo ichie,” to make us aware of the unique and once-in-a-lifetime nature of each meeting.
Dwell in the present. Journeys into the past and the future are often painful and nearly always useless. You can’t change what happened. You can’t know what will happen. But here in this moment, all the possibilities in the world are alive.
Do something you’ve never done before. As Einstein said, you can’t do the same thing over and over and expect different results. Another way of achieving an unforgettable moment is by giving yourself over to kaika and allowing something new to blossom inside you.
Practice zazen. You can sit on a meditation cushion or just sit down and observe the miracle of life. The simple fact of stepping away from the daily whirlwind of hurry and obligations will open the doors to well-being.
Apply mindfulness to your five senses. Train yourself in the art of listening, watching, touching, tasting, and smelling to give each moment the richness of human perception. This will also allow you to be more alert to others and increase your level of empathy and influence.
Notice coincidences. Being aware of coincidences helps us get better at reading signs sent by the universe. A journal in which we keep notes of these moments of daily magic will increase our ability to follow the invisible threads of reality.
Make every gathering a party. Don’t wait for the right circumstances—a vacation, a trip, a birthday—to experience extraordinary things. With the right frame of mind, every day can be a celebration.
If you don’t like what there is, make something different. Human beings are transformative by nature and have the power to reinvent themselves as many times as it takes. If your reality is too dull and predictable to live with ichigo ichie, you have the opportunity to create another.
Be a hunter of special moments. Like with any activity, the more you practice, the better and more abundant the results will be.

Takeaways

The key idea from the book is to be present in the moment. That’s all there is to. However execution of that simple idea in our lives is usually not straightforward. Reading this book reiterates that and gives the context of “Japanese Tea Ceremonies” to highlight the term a Japanese “Ichigo Ichie” that urges everyone to treat every moment as a unique opportunity in our lives.