At the beginning of this book we mentioned Yamanoue Sōji, the tea master who in 1558 introduced for the first time the concept we are trying to work into our lives. The meaning of what he said was, “Treat your host with ichigo ichie.”
What did he mean by this? What does it mean to treat someone as if the encounter were going to happen only once in a lifetime?
Above all, it means paying attention. To what we’re doing, to the other person’s needs (for example, sensing from them when we should stop talking), and to the magic of a shared moment.
Many of the problems we experience in our daily lives as individuals—and on a macro scale as a society—have their origin in a lack of attention to others.
In our globalized world we have the chance to connect with thousands, even millions, of people, but it’s extremely rare to find someone who really knows how to listen. And listening is an essential gift, as we have seen in the chapter dedicated to the art of listening.
Ichigo ichie is a call to recover the power of attention, with your partner, friends, family, coworkers, society, and the whole world.
It involves being aware that this moment might be the last that returns us to the present, in the same way that we would listen intently to someone’s dying words. And the image is no coincidence. Only when we are fully present with others can we truly receive everything they have to offer.
In a world full of conflicts, we need more than ever to stop navel gazing and become more connected to other people. Practicing attention and awareness together can save the world.
Most mindfulness exercises are oriented toward practicing individual attention. Through trainings like the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) devised by Jon Kabat-Zinn, we learn to be aware of our body and our thoughts and emotions.
In this eight-week course, students learn to pay attention to their breathing and to each of their limbs. They are present when they rest, walk, and even when a cloud of negative thoughts invades their mental space.
How do we go from this individual attention and presence to a collective mindfulness? How can we move from our inner world, with our own perceptions, judgments, and needs, to the world of others, so we can share unique moments in a profound way?
According to Andrés Martín Asuero, a pioneer of mindfulness in Latin America and our MBSR teacher, paying attention to oneself immediately makes it easier to connect with others. As he explains in an interview, “The practice of mindfulness helps us realize what we do, how we do it, how we feel about what we do, and how others feel. And based on that knowledge, we can put procedures, mechanisms, and attitudes in place that are oriented toward harmony with oneself and with others.”
Let’s have a look at some strategies for strengthening this ability to pay attention to others.
The first is common sense, which is why it’s surprising that so few people actually do it: Disconnect your devices when someone is talking to you. It’s humiliating trying to talk to someone who keeps glancing at their smartphone or even playing with it, a habit that betrays a lack of respect and can even be seen in the halls of government.
Listen to people’s words and also to their body language. People communicate how they feel about themselves and others through their gestures, posture, tone of voice, the look in their eyes. In this sense, complete attention means being aware of all this so that we can adjust to the other person’s emotional state.
Ask questions without being intrusive. Many people find it frustrating to explain something that’s important to them—perhaps a problem they don’t know how to resolve—and to be met with only silence and a pat on the shoulder. While we needn’t offer solutions or take on a responsibility that isn’t ours, a few thoughtful questions—along with the active listening we’ve already discussed—will be doubly beneficial to the person we’re talking to. It shows that we’re paying attention, and it could bring up aspects of the issue that might not have occurred to them.
Just be with people. Often, what other people need isn’t our opinion or even our questions. Some people need only company, and to know that we’re there with them, sharing their pain or worries.
Or leave them in peace. In high-stress situations, sometimes the best we can do for someone is to give them the gift of privacy. However urgent it may seem to resolve a conflict, if the other party is too worked up, they may benefit most from being left alone. Even if they’re mad at us, the mindful approach can sometimes be to allow them to be angry and withdraw.
Directing your full attention to others isn’t recommended only for conflict and pain. It’s also useful in social settings, like those discussed in the previous chapter.
To see how this works in a celebratory context, we can look at the unique case of Jim Haynes, an American bohemian living in Paris, who at the time we finished writing this book was eighty-four years old.
Haynes, a countercultural activist, is a living legend in the French capital due to the popular “Sunday Dinners” he hosts in his Montparnasse studio, which is said to have belonged to Matisse. Anyone in the world can attend these dinners, which are ichigo ichie in nature, since the guests, all strangers, are unlikely to run into one another again.
To attend, you have to get Haynes’s phone number and call to arrange to be part of the dinner, where a different Parisian chef cooks every Sunday (for free, because the social capital it confers is payment enough). The host’s motto is “The world is invited.”
People visiting from out of town pay a token amount for food and drink, but the most interesting thing about these events is seeing Haynes in action, since the way he conducts the dinner is an example of collective mindfulness.
As they enjoy the different courses, the guests mill around browsing books on the shelves, some of which are by Haynes—like Workers of the World, Unite and Stop Working! and Thanks for Coming! An Autobiography—and are published by his own company, Handshake Editions. At the time of our visit, he was planning to write a new book, Cooking for a Hundred.
Let’s look at the full attention the host gives to everything that happens at these unique dinners for strangers. Standing on a stool, Haynes observes the distracted or solitary people in his studio and gives instructions on who should talk to whom.
A few examples might be as follows:
“You in the yellow sweater! Put that book down and go talk to the girl in glasses sitting on the couch.”
“You two over there, yes, you two. You’ve been talking for a while. I suggest you go talk to those two weird guys serving the tabbouleh.”
“There’s a Japanese woman falling asleep under the lamp. Isn’t anyone going to talk to her?”
The fundamental idea is for no one to feel left out.
From his stool, Haynes devotes his full attention to the people before him, bringing a touch of mindfulness to the art of introducing strangers to one another. According to the types and attitudes he perceives, he pairs people off to converse. More than one marriage or lifelong friendship has resulted from these dinners, which provide an antidote to the Sunday blues.
This champion of introductions, who has spent over three decades creating ichigo ichie every Sunday, seems to channel the philosophy of the famous poem written by John Donne in 1624:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manor of thy friends or of thine own were . . .