Around the time I began writing these essays, now more than sixteen years ago, I also wrote a poem by the same title:
ONE TIME, ONE MEETING
Picking up the phone to call my son,
I entertain the thought that every act,
No matter how familiar or banal,
Might be construed as unrepeatable
And all of life as ceremonial.
What could be less formal than the feel
Of yet another handset in the hand
Or, beneath my fingertips, the cool
Resistance to the punching-in of numbers?
And what could be more normal than hello,
Spoken by a voice I couldn’t fail
To recognize, despite the poor connection,
The fading in and out across the miles?
And yet to entertain that counter-thought,
To see each action and its consequence
As marvelous and not to be repeated,
Suffices to enlarge this conversation
Beyond the casual or circumstantial,
The morning’s headlines and the evening’s news,
As though just now the truth of things had spoken.
(From Leaf, Sunlight, Asphalt, Salmon Poetry, 2009)
As longtime readers of this column may recall, “one time, one meeting” is a translation of the Japanese phrase ichigo ichie. Historically associated with the tea ceremony, the phrase is also a motto for Zen practitioners. It reminds us that in truth, if not always in appearance, every moment of our lives is unprecedented and unrepeatable. As such, it is worthy of our full attention, however habitual or mundane it may seem.
That is the central theme of the poem. But rereading it after many years, the line I find most arresting is “And all of life as ceremonial.” That line envisions a hypothetical (and highly unlikely) state of affairs and should not be read too literally. But the notion of “all of life” being ceremonial invites deeper consideration.
“We don’t stand on ceremony,” I recall a new acquaintance saying, as my first wife and I arrived at her home for a Christmas party. Our hostess’s intention, I assume, was to put us at ease. At the same time, the tone of her greeting was declarative and almost boastful. It reflected and even championed the casual, informal, and individualistic ethos of American culture. And if that was the character of our society four decades ago, it is even more so now.
Ceremonies have their place and their purpose. Weddings, funerals, graduation exercises, church services, and the like mark certain occasions as special and sometimes historic. Whether religious or secular, they bear an aura of the sacramental. At the same time, those of a skeptical nature sometimes view such ceremonials as hollow, archaic forms and little more. As seen from that perspective, public ceremonies function largely to preserve a tradition, elevate the institutions that sponsor them, and preserve existing hierarchies of status, money, and power. Ceremonies are the province of cultural and economic elites. And though they may console, honor, inspire, and otherwise benefit the ordinary people who attend and value them, they may have little to do with the conduct of their daily lives.
Not so in Zen practice. In Zen monasteries, temples, and practice centers around the world, the most familiar chores and tasks, whether they be washing windows, vacuuming cushions, or sweeping steps, are carried out in silence and in ways both ritualistic and ceremonial. And for committed lay practitioners, the attitude underlying this practice extends well beyond the precincts of the zendo and into the activities of everyday life.
In The Little Book of Zen Healing, Paula Arai, a longtime Zen practitioner, observes that “by consciously approaching an action with presence and purpose, you can ritualize any act to be a healing activity.” That may sound like a daunting challenge, best left to advanced practitioners, but it is quite the opposite. As simple as it is efficacious, anyone can learn to do it.
If you would like to experience the practice for yourself, choose a familiar task, perhaps one you perform every day. Take three deep but natural breaths, following them from start to finish.
Now reflect on the nature of the task at hand. Consider its relationship to present conditions, including the environment, the season, and the time of day. If the task involves a tangible object, such as the cotton T-shirt you are folding or the hand-crafted ornament you are hanging on the tree, take a minute to contemplate its constituent materials and the labor that went into its making. Then give the task your full attention, as though you had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.
Undertaken with this attitude, onerous chores can become dignified acts of attention. Personal and household maintenance, which can occupy so large a space in our daily lives, can be transformed into a venue for insight and understanding. And over time, if you persist, this venerable practice can foster greater appreciation of the gifts of nature, closer alignment with things as they are, and a profound and lasting equanimity.
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Paula Arai, The Little Book of Zen Healing, (Shambhala 2023), 107