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

by Héctor García

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.”

The first part of the term ichigo ichie (一期) is used in Buddhist scripture to refer to the time that passes from the moment we are born until we die. As we have just seen in the Tibetan legend, the opportunity or encounter with life is what is offered to you now. If you don’t seize the moment, it will be lost forever.

There is a monastery in Spain where it is said that whenever the monks run into each other in the passageway, they say to each other, “Brother, remember that one day you’re going to die.” This custom places them in a permanent now, which, far from causing them sadness or worry, inspires them to enjoy every moment of their lives.

As Marcus Aurelius writes in his Meditations, the drama of existence is not death but never having begun to live.

The first written example we have of ichigo ichie is in a notebook belonging to the tea master Yamanoue Sōji, in 1588. What he wrote was this: Treat your host as if the meeting were going to occur only once in your life.

THE TIME IS NOW Each tea ceremony should be treated with great attention because it is ichigo ichie, which is to say, a unique encounter in time. Even though the host and guests may see each other daily, the gathering can never be exactly repeated. If we consider the extraordinary nature of every moment, we realize that each encounter is a once- in-a-lifetime occasion. The host should thus show true sincerity and take the greatest care with every detail, to make sure that everything flows smoothly and without a hitch. The guests for their part must understand that the encounter will never occur again, and so they must appreciate every detail of the ceremony prepared by the host and, of course, participate wholeheartedly. All this is what is meant by the expression “ichigo ichie.” —Ii Naosuke, “Great Elder” of the Tokugawa Shogunate, in Chanoyu ichi-e shu (1858)

Heraclitus said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

There’s a Peanuts cartoon that shows Snoopy and Charlie Brown from behind, sitting on a jetty beside a lake, having the following conversation: “Someday, we will all die, Snoopy!” “True, but on all the other days, we will not.”

Sakura is visible proof of how the most beautiful things in life are fleeting and can’t be postponed.

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.

When kaika is transformative, we want to turn it into mankai. In other words, we want to make sure that what has been born inside us matures and unfolds to its full potential.

What matters isn’t how many more years we might live but what we will do with the time we have left.

Instead we get angry when we believe we are victims of wrongdoing or when something that has happened to us is unfair. If we go on the attack, we often lose control and make the problem worse, since then the other party also feels threatened and attacks in turn. If we repress our rage, we can do ourselves harm. Whether we attack or repress, anger is almost always a destructive emotion, as the Buddha taught: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else: You are the one who gets burned.” 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.

2. Sadness. This emotion often stems from a sense of loss, in a broad array of situations. We feel sadness when we lose a loved one to death or separation, and we go through a grieving process as we adjust to our new situation. We also feel sad when we lose a useful or valuable object—for instance, a cell phone—or when our car breaks down or our income is reduced. There is also a more existential kind of sadness, which invites us to reflect, such as when we lose hope or the will to live for no apparent reason and find ourselves in a state of apathy that leaves us diminished. 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. From a physiological point of view, Ekman points out that this emotion causes us to lower our eyelids and turn down our lips. A person who is sad doesn’t pay attention to what’s in front of them—they aren’t in the present—and that’s why we say that they have a “blank stare.” 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. Just like anger, this emotion is closely connected to our survival instinct and serves to warn us of threats or potential harm. When human beings lived in the jungle, fear was essential for detecting imminent danger and preparing our body to fight or flee. As with anger, fear activates the secretion of adrenaline and noradrenaline, which cause our pulse and blood pressure to skyrocket, also making us hyperventilate. Other physical symptoms of fear include sweating, shaking, and muscle tension, which can sometimes make us feel paralyzed. Just like with anger, the problem is that our fear alarm often goes off when no predator or real threat is present. We are afraid of things that might happen but that are not an immediate threat. We’re afraid of losing our job, our partner, our friends’ attention or affection, our health. . . . When experienced on a sustained basis, this anticipatory fear, based on our predictions of what might happen, can lead to ...

4. Happiness. This is the least studied emotion, and it has a mysterious character, since it isn’t always justified, and some people have a special predisposition toward it, whereas others appear to sabotage it. Depending on its intensity, happiness places us within a range of inner experiences, from serene contentment to uncontrolled euphoria. In all these cases, it’s an emotion that conjures a celebration of life, lightheartedness, and optimism. 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. In a soccer match, after a player scores a goal, he runs toward his teammates to give them a hug. Happiness is something we experience and something we give. It not only puts us on the sunny side of life but also brings us closer to others. The writer and speaker Alex Rovira makes a distinction between two kinds of happiness: happiness with a cause and happiness without a cause. The first kind depends on external events and is therefore fleeting: when our team wins a match, when we win the lottery, when we get promoted. Happiness without a cause comes from inside, for no particular reason, like a transmission from the soul that we can decide to tune in to. We’ll work on this unconditional emotion, which puts us in a state of contentment, in the practical section of this book.

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.

The most important thing is to keep your back straight, from your pelvis up to your neck. Your eyes should be directed to the floor, at a distance of about three feet, or watching the wall, as in the case of the zazen meditation of the Rinzai school. 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. “When you sit still, think about not thinking. How do you think about not thinking? Non-thinking. This is the art of zazen,” said Dogen Zenji (1200–1253), considered the founder of this practice. 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.

1. 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. 2. 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. 3. 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. 4. 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? 5. 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...

“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.

The Second Arrow There is a revealing story that tells how the Buddha taught one of his followers a technique for fighting the inevitable dukkha that appears in our lives. “If a person is walking through the forest and is shot by an arrow, is it painful?” asked the master. “Of course,” answered his follower. “And if he is then shot by a second arrow, is it even more painful?” the Buddha continued. “Of course, much more than the first.” “The first arrow represents the bad things that happen to us, which we cannot avoid,” the Buddha concluded. “Those things over which we have no control. But we are the ones who shoot the second arrow, inflicting unnecessary damage on ourselves.” The second arrow is what, in modern times, has been termed meta-emotion: what we feel about what we have felt. If something bad happens to us, we will inevitably feel pain, but after the misfortune’s initial impact, we tend to react by brooding over what has happened. And when we start mulling it over, feeding the pain of the initial impact, the only thing we achieve is to create more pain. This is the second arrow. 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. The Buddha summed it up with perhaps his most famous saying, “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. Fresh water gives us more pleasure after thirst. Finding love is a far greater privilege after we’ve experienced being sad and lonely. Be aware of the temporary nature of pain. The things that wound us don’t last forever unless we are determined to lengthen their echo. If we do not wallow in pain, and instead limit ourselves to experiencing it, the pain will gradually fade, and we will be left with a learning experience. Make up for misfortune by enjoying moments of ichigo ichie. Whether we are alone or in the company of loved ones, the best way to overcome difficulty is by giving ourselves the gift of a beautiful experience that shows us the bright side of life. In the third section of this book, we will see many examples of how to do so.

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.

While amor fati means accepting that everything that happens to us, even when it’s unpleasant, happens for a reason, it’s up to us to give it a positive meaning, with our attitude and with what we decide to do with what destiny hands us from moment to moment.

Chanoyu is a call for us to pay attention to all five senses and to be anchored in the present, making the ceremony an art that goes far beyond drinking tea.

We can trace back to the same period another key concept of this aesthetic, with profound significance for the human soul: kintsugi. 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. Just like a delicate piece of porcelain, the human heart can be damaged, but concealing the damage out of shame isn’t the solution. 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.

In the purest version of wabi-sabi, kintsugi doesn’t attempt to hide any flaws. Quite the opposite: It highlights them, giving objects a new personality. Having problems is part of being alive. It is our difficulties and how we face them, more than our periods of contentment, that shape us throughout the course of our lives.

Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh recommends: “There is nothing else filling your mind as you chew—no projects, no deadlines, no worries, no ‘to do’ list, no fears, no sorrow, no anger, no past, and no future. There is just the apple.”