Ichi-go ichi-e. The master told me it roughly translates to “one meeting, one moment in your life that will never happen again.”

The tea master there told me of a phrase the sixteenth-century Japanese tea master Sen no Rikyū taught his students to keep in the front of their minds as they conduct the ceremony: Ichi-go ichi-e. The master told me it roughly translates to “one meeting, one moment in your life that will never happen again.”