The London Lounge

Ichi-go ichi-e - one time, one encounter

… or everything happens only once.

The Japanese tea ceremony, with its traditions and rules, may be repeated thousands of times over a lifetime, but ichi-go ichi-e is an invitation to become aware that every occurence is unrepeatable and singular, though it may resemble all the others. Every encounter is worth cherishing for its uniqueness, which needs to be lived as though it were the only time. Being fully present avoids falling into routine and makes one aware that there is really no repetition in life, that everything only takes place once.
It is also an invitation to recognize transience and cherish it, to value the fleeting instant and keep the perception fresh for nuances.
A suit, a tie or a pair of shoes are made to be worn numerous times in a lifetime. We may like to be creative and mix and match differently every time, but after a while we are bound to repeat ourselves. We also grow fond of certain combinations and keep coming back to those. Making an effort to appear new every day can be even worse, as we may fall into the trap of originality for its own sake. How then can we avoid the tedious feeling of repetition?
Ichi-go ichi-e is an answer, which involves recognizing that every time we resort to a consecrated “outfit” in our wardrobe or to our favourite tie, it is in fact an entirely new occurrence: we ourselves are not the same as last time, the context is another, the knot of the tie may look slightly different, the people we meet or the places we go are different (hopefully!). There is no copy/paste in life, even if it may appear so from a superficial perspective.
On a different level, Brummel was said to throw away a tie that did not make a satisfactory knot on the first attempt – that is very much ichi-go ichi-e: no second chance, no series of attempts or struggling with it. If it doesn’t work, move on, keep with the flow of things, rather than stop and stubbornly redo until everything is “perfect”. Or simply accept an imperfectly tied knot and live with it for a day: it came out just so this time.


Like the touch of a brush dipped in ink that leaves a mark on a sheet of paper: there is no retouching. And, while they all look - or mean - the same, no two are identical.

Dear Costi,

Costi wrote:ichi-go ichi-e is an invitation to become aware that every occurence is unrepeatable and singular, though it may resemble all the others

this is a highly interesting understanding of things, and if I'm not wrong, it is applied in many disciplines.

A prerequisite is meticulous training over years to become a master of your trade or art. Think about Sushi masters training over a decade to cut fish. Think about calligraphy masters in Japan or China training a life time and getting really good when they are 70, 80 years old and more. Think about Ella Fitzgerald's mastership in improvisation (best known example when she forgot the lyrics in Berlin), think about Maestro Abbado's legendary orchestra of his friends performing in Lucerne, or Toscanini's predecessor in the fifties. Or, as we are on the LL, think about the mastership of old tailors...

In our fast living world where everybody is seeking instant gratification and benefit, ichi-go ichi-e could be an important lesson to internalise, no matter where it is applied. Anybody out there spending a life writing a book like Proust, or writing poetry not to be published but stored in a chest like Pessoa?

cheers, david

Interesting and eye-opnening, Costi, but also a very romantic perspective. Is Mozart more art than Beethoven, because he didn't keep rewriting his works like Beethoven, who tossed and turned every node?

True, David! Ichi-go ichi-e is the peak of mastery, not the bottom of ignorance. Yet, strangely, they arrive to touch each other, don't they? True masters come to a point where they forget everything they learned - they have assimilated knowledge, absorbed experience and melted it into something else that has the appearance of ignorance, but is in fact utter wisdom. They seem very much like fools and like children. But on a whole different level...

Ha, interesting parallel, Gruto!
I guess not more art, but more Zen. While Beethoven was a struggler - both in life and in music, Mozart was more of a medium. He had clarity inborn, Beethoven had to search for it. Mozart could fly, Beethoven had a heavy, giant step - impressive, but gravitational: faustian (he had great admiration for Goethe - the poet, not the man).
Yet in his last quartets there is a different quality, a degree of interiorization that had not developed (or surfaced?) until then. Was he nearing his truth?...
I have a friend who was a monk (serving in Heavens now), who once told me that in many people the first thought is from God. For others, it is the second, while the first is from His enemy. Mozart may have belonged to the former category, while Beethoven - to the latter. But I suppose it is only important to understand what is one's own case, so that one knows how to work...
As far as romanticism, I suppose you are closer to it with stormy Beethoven, who bespeaks it, than I might be with purely classical Zen-Mozart

Heraketos which was a pre Socratic philosopher , said " πάντα ρέει" which means everything is at flow , and he also said that '' one can never enter in the same river twice " explaining that even if you put your foot in a river in exactly the same spot a minute later after you previously did the river as a constantly changing in flow leaving system has changed , and surely as Costi says you have changed, simply because you have added a small new experience in to your life.

V

So true, Vassilis! Even organically the cell colony that makes up our bodies refreshes itself permanently, so we are literally not the same as a few years ago. Not to speak of what happens with our ego, our emotions, our intellect...

After 1906, Mark Twain's wardrobe consisted of 15 white suits, including one for evening wear.

The New York Tribune of 15 Feb. 1907 wrote:Washington, Dec. 7--Mark Twain visited the press gallery of the House of Representatives this afternoon and delivered a homily on the subject of clothes to the Washington correspondents. The author was dressed in a summer suit of white flannels, and when surprise was expressed that he should show such disdain for the December air, he said: "There is absolutely no comfortable and delightful and pleasant costume but the human skin. That, however, is impossible. But when you are seventy-one years old you may at least be pardoned for dressing as you please.

Gentlemen, here we go, from Ichi-go ichi-e over 16 white suits to 7 brown corduroy suits

Eric Satie wrote:Satie was a man about town and a creature of Parisian café society (or, if you’re into Walter Benjamin, a flaneur). He assiduously cultivated his image, and over the years staged numerous publicity stunts. Every day for years he wore the same matching velours outfit (of which he owned seven identical sets), thus receiving the nickname “the velours gentleman”. (But as the photos show, it was corduroy -- velours côtelé -- and not velvet. Another good thing -- velvet would have been too foo-foo.)