Moment Hunting: Ichigo Ichie

Lose your­self in the moment, find your­self in the moment. ~Buddhist Koan 

When she was small, I bought Izzie a beau­ti­ful, vin­tage tea set from an antique store in Louisville. The shop own­er told me that the set was Japanese. Each of the 15 pieces is made of bone chi­na and hand paint­ed with blue and yel­low flow­ers. The tiny cups hold a thim­ble-full of tea and the saucer in which they sit are the size of a sil­ver dol­lar. The plat­ter, which was the size of a domi­no, is imprint­ed with 一期一会.

I recent­ly found the tea set while clean­ing and took a pic­ture of the charm­ing lit­tle plat­ter, then sent it to my friend, who speaks Japanese. She told me it reads, ichi­go ichie (pro­nounced, charm­ing­ly, itchy-GO itchy‑A). She told me to look it up. She includ­ed the winky face emo­ji and added that it was a tru­ly per­fect mes­sage for me. 

Indeed. Ichigo ichie trans­lates rough­ly as in the moment, an oppor­tu­ni­ty. Some trans­late it as now or nev­er or a once in a life­time encounter. It’s a call to be awake to the now, for this moment is spe­cial, infi­nite­ly valu­able, and shall nev­er be repeat­ed. In Japan, it’s often repeat­ed when greet­ing some­one, to con­vey that the encounter – and the per­son – is absolute­ly unique. Ichigo Ichie is a tenet of Zen Buddhism. 

Its usage comes from the ancient Japanese tea cer­e­mo­ny, where the rit­u­al asks us to be com­plete­ly present to each moment of the tea drink­ing. Before the tea is served, guests take a moment to med­i­tate on a tapes­try print­ed with the cal­lig­ra­phy  一期一会 as a way to clear and focus the mind. Il Naosuke was the Tairo of the Tokugawa shogu­nate and a Japanese tea mas­ter in the 1850s. As head of Japan’s feu­dal mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment, he was besieged with assas­si­na­tion threats. So, each day he made his tea as if it were his last, with full under­stand­ing that every tea expe­ri­ence stood alone and wouldn’t – couldn’t – be repeat­ed in the same way. This mind­ful­ness habit last­ed until he was cut down by a samu­rai sword at the age of 44. 

Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh advis­es us to, “Drink your tea slow­ly and rev­er­ent­ly, as if it is the axis on which the earth revolves . . . slow­ly, even­ly, with­out rush­ing toward the future. Live the actu­al moment. Only this moment is life.” This sounds allur­ing­ly poet­ic . . . in the­o­ry. Is it even pos­si­ble in our noisy, demand­ing world to be as awake to the now as Naosuke was to his tea? 

Contrary to pop­u­lar belief, humans can­not mul­ti­task. We can only attend to one thing at a time. And in a world where vir­tu­al out­put feels like every­thing, it’s get­ting rar­er to be ful­ly present in the sen­sa­tions of our phys­i­cal bod­ies. We bare­ly taste the pota­to chips so engrossed are we in a Netflix binge. We pay scant atten­tion to our feet as they hit the earth, lis­ten­ing instead to what­ev­er is blar­ing through our head­phones. We no longer real­ly see what is in front of us, for we rarely look up. When we do, we men­tal­ly set up an Instagram-ready shot and plan which fil­ters will make our real­i­ty appear more allur­ing. Even our sense of smell has been thwart­ed, the ubiq­ui­tous mask a bar­ri­er between our olfac­to­ry nerve and the world around us. 

We are so con­cerned with miss­ing the moments of oth­ers, we allow our own to pass by with­out regard. 

But if each moment holds innate val­ue, why would we allow them to slip unno­ticed through the hour­glass? I like to think of ichi­go ichie as moment hunt­ing. Being present is a choice, an active par­tic­i­pa­tion in our lives. 

We are only promised two things while alive: change and the breath. To nav­i­gate the first with more ease, we tune in to the sec­ond as often as pos­si­ble. Simply inhale and exhale through the nose with mind­ful aware­ness. Be a wit­ness to the sen­sa­tions of breath­ing. Awake to the won­der­ful gift of life. Sip your breath with the same atten­tion that Naosuke sipped his tea.