一期一会, Once-In-A-Lifetime-Meeting

一期一会

Once-In-A-Lifetime-Meeting

October 1 , 2010.

Mystic Surfer, Master of Solitude.　

In the Prologue, I wrote that I had finally discovered my own final destination but it doesn’t mean that I’m already determined to settle there.

Come to think about it, I have been excited every day, and I always ask myself why am I excited?  It’s not just because Philippines  has an abundance of waves but I also think it’s because of the diverse  people and culture, which is very hard to comprehend if I only use the logic acquired from the environment where in I grew up.  

Would you consider it exciting or painful?  It all depends on your capacity to accept and adapt changes. As for me, I will always stay here to cherish exciting moments every single day.

I believe that a traveler at heart is a person who is able to engrave such blissful moments in his mind, and to discover and experience such moments is a real travel.

We travel moment by moment and to my opinion, the instance of meeting this moment is the essence of travel.

For this reason, I set out to travel every day.

When I think about the travel (encounter) moments, I was able to come up with the word “Ichigo Ichie” which means “Once-In-A-Lifetime-Meeting”.

Originally, this word is being used during a Tea Ceremony in Japan. It means that when we meet in the tea room, you should have a mindset that every meeting is a Treasure  for it will never recur. This moment only occurs once in a life time, a very brief meeting and yet the final one; it will never happen again. You must be determined with this kind of resolution.

If you can perceive the usual scenery with this kind of vision, your mind will be opened and will be able to see things in different perspectives; hence the awakening of unlimited passion for moments.

Now, at this point which I am here and the wave that I would ride today is different from the wave that I had ridden yesterday and still will vary from tomorrow’s  wave. Moreover, the wave of today is individually unique from each other in its own way.

When I reached this kind of though, my surfing style became different. We cannot see same wave gain and this moment has never come again, hence the awakening of unlimited passion for moments

Even so, an encounter with you today is different with yesterday and tomorrow’s encounter. These moments will never recur, it’s only for now and only at this moment.

In addition, the relationship that we have with God at this moment is at its highest level, not yesterday(past) or tomorrow(future). This level is called Mystic.

From the encounters of “Ichigo Ichie” (Once-In-A-Lifetime-Meeting), my articles such as Soul Surfing, Moonlight Surfer, Blue Heaven, For the Expert of Solitude, and the like were born.

I might go out today also and travel in search of a new encounter of “Ichigo Ichie” in my ordinary life.

Mystic Traveler,

Hiroshi