More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
March 12 - March 12, 2024
Before beginning to study the sacred texts and constantly singing the sutras, the student should learn to read the love letters sent by the snow, the wind, and the rain. — IKKYŪ, Zen master
The meaning of ichigo ichie is something like this: What we are experiencing right now will never happen again. And therefore, we must value each moment like a beautiful treasure.
Henry David Thoreau: “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
In our age of complete distraction and our culture of instant gratification, when we often fail to listen, and engage only superficially with our surroundings, each person contains a key that can open the door to attention, harmony with others, and love of life.
Ichigo ichie can be translated as “Once, a meeting” and also as “In this moment, an opportunity.” What this means to tell us is 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.
This is something we all know as human beings but easily forget when we allow ourselves to get caught up in our everyday worries and obligations.
As Marcus Aurelius writes in his Meditations, the drama of existence is not death but never having begun to live.
Ichigo ichie is a clear invitation to “now or never,” since though we may manage to live many years, every meeting has a unique essence and will never be repeated.
Perhaps we’ll run into the same people in the same place again, but we’ll be older, our situation and our humor will be distinct; we’ll be carrying the weight of other priorities and other experiences. The universe is in a constant state of flux, and so...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Treat your host as if the meeting were going to occur only once in your life.
When you part company, ichigo ichie would
be an appropriate way to say goodbye. By saying this, you let them know that this was a pleasant encounter that will not happen again in the future.
epic film Boyhood
Just as pregnant women see baby bumps everywhere they look, as soon as we become moment hunters, everything ends up being unique and sublime, since we have the privilege of knowing that what we are experiencing right now will never happen again.
hanami, which literally means “viewing the flowers.”
yozakura, or “night cherry blossom.
kaika, a term that refers to the earliest buds.
mankai, which means “the exact moment when the sakura flower is fully opened.”
The Japanese enjoy this moment, too. They even have a word, hanafubuki, to describe a flurry of sakura petals, a sublime moment that expresses the beauty and poetry of the impermanent.
The attention to detail and patience of the Japanese can be seen in all kinds of disciplines.
eliminate the unnecessary to get to the essential
If we translate this into Japanese terms, the first part of the formula is ikigai: discovering something we become passionate about and which also comes easily to us. Once we’ve identified our mission, then comes kaika, which is sometimes the most difficult part: 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.
The third thing is to stay on that path, to be patient and to keep dreaming, until we obtain mankai.
We all have the ability to make a new start in life, regardless of age.
What matters isn’t how many more years we might live but what we will do with the time we have left.
They are aware of their mission, and they know how to enjoy every moment. For them, the present moment is a permanent opportunity to experience ichigo ichie.
1. Anger
In addition to being socially undesirable, the problem with anger is that it is rarely linked to any real threat, given that these days, except in extraordinary circumstances—when we find ourselves in a war zone or victims of a street attack—we have no predators.
When we get mad, it’s almost always due to our interpretation of something that has happened or that someone has done. Therefore, anger keeps us tied to the past, preventing us from enjoying the here and now.
When this sadness lasts a long time, longer than is proportionate to the loss, it can lead to depression. When sadness is healthy, it allows us to understand what has happened, to say goodbye to what we loved, and to prepare a new strategy to move forward in life. It can be translated into art, in any form, as a path for our inner alchemy.
Sadness keeps us tied to the past because our attention is focused on what we lost, what no longer exists, or what we wanted but didn’t get. In any case, as long as we’re sad, we aren’t in the here and now.
3. Fear.
Fear is an emotion that projects us into the future. When we live in fear, it’s impossible to enjoy what we do and what we have.
Happiness makes us effusive, which explains why, when we experience it, we want to share it with others. When we feel happy, we become more empathetic, generous, and human.
Of the four basic emotions we have examined, only happiness belongs to the present and is the home of ichigo ichie.
To achieve this, every time you feel unhappy, you just have to begin to translate it, like this: • Are you angry/sad? You’re living in the past. Come back!/Wake up! • Are you afraid? You’re living in the future. Come back!
Between six and ten points (POOR): You project yourself easily into the past or the future as a result of stress and anxiety that prevent you from enjoying life. You need to learn to come back to the present.
When you are mindful, you are fully aware of your surroundings and of yourself in the present. Mindfulness increases the time that you swim with your head above water, when you can see both potential dangers and pleasures. When you are mindful, you are aware of your position and your destination. You can make corrections to your path.
For those who spend much of their lives exiled from the present, an experience like this can be transformative.
Zazen meditation has no specific goal other than simply centering oneself as much as possible in the present, observing without attachment the things that pass through your mind.
It is notable that the old master spoke not of making the mind “blank”—often mistakenly considered the goal of meditation—but rather of “not thinking.” This means letting go of anything that passes through our mind without becoming attached to it. In this way, we can reach a state without past or future, which allows us to feel every sensation in our body in the present.
Steve liked the idea of using the mind to study the mind, something known in psychology as “metacognition.”
Jobs practiced calligraphy, too. It was important to him that the letters on his computer screens be beautiful. This was just one of the ways he was influenced by his master.
“You will find Zen in your everyday life, if you dedicate yourself passionately to what you love. . . . You can still have a spiritual life while you run your business.” In other words, Kobun encouraged Jobs to seek spirituality in his ikigai.
1. Just sit and see what happens
2. Savor this moment as if it were your last breath.
3. Avoid distractions.
4. Free yourself from everything that isn’t essential.
5. Be your own friend.
6. Celebrate imperfection.
