The Book of Ichigo Ichie: The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way

by Héctor García

7. Practice compassion.

8. Let go of your expectations.

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.”

meta-emotion: what we feel about what we have felt.

There is no way to protect ourselves from the first arrows, because life is an adventure full of constant risks, but what we can do is avoid shooting ourselves with the second ones, which are the worry and anxiety that arise from thinking about the first.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”

Understand that life is made up of troubles and satisfaction, and without the former we would be unable to enjoy the latter, since contrast allows us to appreciate the good things in life.

Be aware of the temporary nature of pain.

Make up for misfortune by enjoying moments of ichigo ichie.

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.”

The complete expression means: the nostalgia and sadness caused by the impermanence of life and all things that exist.

Feeling mono no aware is not a negative experience; on the contrary, it means being connected to life’s true essence, to the impermanent, and is therefore a direct path to ichigo ichie.

The key to achieving this is to stop orienting ourselves toward new desires, and to begin to sense the magic in everything around us. Happiness lies in wanting nothing outside ourselves, and in appreciating what life has to offer us while it lasts.

memento mori means “Remember that you will die,”

A philosopher once said that humans are mortals who act as if they are going to live forever, but rather than making us live like gods, this opens the way to the enemies of the present: • Prioritizing the urgent (for other people) over the important (for us). • Postponing what we most want to do again and again, as if we had unlimited time. • Thinking that the conditions aren’t right to do what we want to do but that in the future they will be. • Boycotting the present with feelings of resentment, sadness, and worry that prevent us from enjoying it.

In this sense, ichigo ichie becomes the friendly face of carpe diem, since instead of emphasizing the fact that one day we will die, it reminds us that today we can live.

Mae West said, “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”

The term the butterfly effect is associated with the popular saying, “A butterfly beating its wings in Hong Kong can unleash a storm in New York.” In other words, any change, no matter how small, ends up creating completely different circumstances due to a process of amplification.

Though we never know the final consequences of our actions and decisions, every moment holds an essential value. This returns us to an ichigo ichie whose effects reach into the future: What you do now will have a unique and totally different result from what you might do at another time.

If you don’t let a little chance into your life, your experiences will always be the same.

Some people experience many meaningful coincidences while others seem immune to them. Why? This depends essentially on attention. When we discover coincidences, we become more sensitive to and observant of them, and this helps us begin to detect more. These subtle messages sent to us by chance are a tool for conscious magic that we can develop in various ways:

Paying more attention to what happens around us:

Keeping a diary.

Talking to creative people.

• Practicing meditation.

Taste. The tea served is of the highest quality. Typically, a single cup of extremely pure tea is drunk, and its flavor endures for a long time afterward.

Smell. The scent of the infusion, intense and fragrant, is also important, as are those of the sweets eaten as part of the ceremony. If the ceremony is conducted in a traditional teahouse, the smells of the wood, the garden’s moist soil, and the trees are also part of the experience.

Sight. The tea sets are especially beautiful in their simplicity and are admired and praised as part of the traditional ceremony. The gentle movements of the tea master are also a feast for the eyes, since th...

Touch. Holding the hot cup in your hands before raising it to your lips activates this fourth sense and symbolizes contact with the ...

Sound. There may be the rustle of the leaves if we are surrounded by trees, and in the modern tea ceremony, participants speak and listen with the utmost attention, acco...

Also known as kintsukuroi, kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing ceramics with a mixture of lacquer and powdered gold.

Kintsugi is a radical example of wabi-sabi, which teaches us that there is beauty in imperfection. It can also be seen as a metaphor for life, in which we accumulate wounds and losses. Leaving our emotional wounds exposed forever, like a broken cup that goes unrepaired, causes unnecessary suffering. But we can recover, using what we have learned from our misfortunes and failures. In this way, our scars will tell our stories like the golden lacquer of kintsugi.

The damage is part of our history and has brought us to where we are. Just for this, it deserves the brilliance of gold, which reflects a light that in this case is our own.

It’s estimated that if someone talks while we’re trying to read or write, our productivity is reduced by 66 percent.

It’s also interesting to see how groups that don’t suffer from noise pollution develop extraordinary hearing abilities. This is why communities living in the jungle or in rural areas, as well as monks and nuns, are the groups that listen best.

Find the right place for important conversations

Look your interlocutor in the eye.

Turn off interfering thoughts

Ask questions without interrupting.

Don’t give unsolicited advice.

Try to get out into the countryside once a week to regain your ability to see.

When you walk to work, or go out to run errands, instead of becoming a zombie absorbed in your smartphone, pay attention to the details of your city that usually pass you by. Notice the buildings, the color of the sky, and the shapes of the clouds floating by. In other words, use your eyes to appreciate the world around you, as if you were in an enormous gallery.

• When you meet up with other people, pay attention not only to the meeting place but also to the details and nuances that reveal your friends’ emotional state and intentions. Do they look relaxed, or maybe they’re sitting up straight and look tense? What are they doing with their hands? Is their gaze steady, or are they distracted? This kind of attention will give us a deeper look, both literally and metaphorically, at who each person is and at how they are, right here and right now.

• One mistake often made in a museum is wanting to “see it all,” since most of us have a limited attention span. After fifty or sixty works, or maybe fewer, it’s easy to feel tired and overwhelmed. To avoid this, it’s best to choose just one part of the collection, or even the works of a particular artist who interests us. • During your visit, choose three to five paintings that stood out for you. If there’s a place to sit in front of a painting, as is often the case with important works, even better. • Take at least five minutes to look at each of these paintings. Once you’ve seen a painting as a whole, focus on the details, allowing yourself to be absorbed in the canvas, as if you were part of it. • Then, ask yourself questions like these: What story is this painting trying to tell? What might have inspired the painter? What kind of feelings does the painting inspire? Is there anything here that I can connect to my life? If it happens to be an abstract painting, focus on the last two questions. • Before leaving the museum, if you can buy postcards of these paintings in the museum store, you can use them later as a reminder of the ichigo ichie moment you had looking at them.

THE BENEFITS OF TOUCH As well as giving us moments to remember, regular physical contact offers the following benefits: 1. It lowers blood pressure and facilitates general relaxation, decreasing headaches and improving sleep quality. This explains why we usually sleep better after sexual intercourse.

It communicates a sense of trust and intimacy that can’t be obtained through words alone. A conflict that many arguments have failed to resolve can dissipate after a long, sincere hug. 3. It motivates us to be successful. Dacher Keltner, the author of Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, tells us that members of sports teams who congratulate each other with hugs or high fives achieve better results than those who don’t interact physically. 4. It strengthens relationships. Sexologists point out that couples who engage in frequent physical contact have a higher level of empathy and stay together longer than those for whom physical contact is purely sexual. 5. It lifts your mood. A big hug or even a relaxing massage can help dissipate negative feelings that have built up during a bad day. Boris Cyrulnik’s Discovery

• When you touch something with your hands, like a gnarled tree trunk, close your eyes and imagine that you have ears and eyes in your hands. • Make a habit of touching things in your day-to-day life. When buying an item of clothing, before trying it on, touch the fabric to feel its texture. • When you step out onto the street, be aware of the weather against your skin: feel the cold or the warmth of the sun, the humidity, the breeze . . . • Try walking barefoot on surfaces that can’t harm your feet, such as wood, grass, or even dirt, to awaken the sensitivity in the soles of your feet. Feel how they support the weight of your body and how they move to balance it.

Pine for stress relief.

Lavender for sleep.

• Mint for concentration.