Thanksgiving!

[NYC_SKP]

1. Awesome! If I might add one from the Far East:

It's not an annual thing, it can be a daily giving of thanks and recognition.

I posted in a different thread today about an example of celebrating the special quality of every moment: the Japanese Tea Ceremony, more specifically, "the Ichi-go ichi-e":

Ichi-go ichi-e: this is the moment

Tea Following up on Benjamin Zander's inspirational teachings on the art of possibility (and performance), allow me to share a simple idea from the art of tea or Sadou, "the way of tea." You may think that the traditional art of Sadou (茶道 is a strange place to glean lessons that can be applied to various aspects of our daily lives, but the simple practical lessons from the Zen arts run deep and wide. Ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会 is a concept connected to the way of tea; it expresses the ideal of the way of tea. Roughly translated the phrase means "one time, one meeting" or "one encounter; one opportunity." In the way of tea we should respect the host and the others in the garden and the tea room and honor the moment as if it were a once-in-a-lifetime gathering. That is, we should cherish every meeting for it will never happen again. Ichi-go ichi-e is a reminder that each tea ceremony is unique even though the elements are familiar.

But it's not only about the specialness of each moment in the moment, but that every moment is eternal, too:

Forever but never again

This idea of ichi-go ichi-e reminded me of a line from a famous jazz ballad from 1949 called "Again" (Mark Murphy's Stolen Moments version is my favorite; here are the lyrics). There is nothing "Zen" about the lyrics or their origins, of course, but there is one line from the song that has stayed with me since I bought the Mark Murphy album when I was 16: "We'll have this moment forever, but never again." I didn't understand that line when I was in high school, but it stuck with me. Now those simple eight words are almost a kind of mantra for me; and the meaning is clear and illuminating.

http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2008/07/ichi-go-ichi-e-this-is-the-moment.html

Ichi-go ichi-e, my friend!