En (縁): The Invisible Thread That Brought Us Here
A conversation about fate, karma, and the strange beauty of being alive at the same time
It started, as many of our conversations do, with an ordinary Tuesday afternoon in Osaka. Nicholas had just come from a client meeting in Namba. Catherine had taken the subway from her university in Toyonaka. I’d been at my studio in Honmachi all morning, staring at a half-finished textile pattern. None of us planned this gathering with any particular agenda.
Which, now that I think about it, is exactly the point.
Which, now that I think about it, is exactly the point.
Nicholas: Alright, so what are we talking about today? I’ve got a 6 o’clock call with New York.
Takeshi: En. The concept of en — connection, or fate, depending on how you translate it.
Nicholas: En. Like… destiny?
Takeshi: Not exactly. Destiny feels too predetermined.
En is more like… the accumulated conditions that made something possible. Every cause, every chain of events, that had to align for this moment to happen.
Nicholas: So you’re talking karma.
Takeshi: Related, yes. In Buddhism, inga ōhō — cause and effect — is the foundation. Nothing arises without a reason. Every result has a cause, and every action becomes a cause for something else.
Catherine: So en is like the result of all those causes? Like, the web that everything leaves behind?
Takeshi: That’s a beautiful way to put it, actually.
Nicholas: Okay, but I’m going to push back here. I feel like “everything happens for a reason” is the kind of thing people say on Instagram under a sunset photo. How is this actually different?
Takeshi: (laughs) Fair point. The difference is that
en doesn’t necessarily mean things happen for a reason — like there’s some grand plan or purpose. It means things happen because of reasons.
Because of accumulated causes. There’s no script being followed. There’s just an endless chain of conditions producing outcomes.
Nicholas: Isn’t that just… physics?
Takeshi: In a way, yes. Buddhism and modern physics are surprisingly close on this one. But where physics describes mechanics, en is about the relational dimension of those causes. The fact that you and I are sitting here — that is en. Not because God arranged it. Not because the universe is fulfilling some purpose. But because a specific set of unrepeatable conditions converged.
Catherine: Can you give us an example? Like, trace it back?
Takeshi: Okay. Think about this: you, Catherine, grew up in California. Something — a professor, a film, a book, a random trip — made you interested in Japan specifically. Not Korea, not China. Japan. That interest built up over years. At some point you applied to a program in Osaka. You got accepted. You moved. You ended up at a specific café where we first met. Any one of those links breaks, and we don’t know each other.
Catherine: (pausing) That’s actually kind of overwhelming when you lay it out like that.
Nicholas: And I came here for work. My firm had an opening in Osaka, not Tokyo, not Fukuoka. And you, Takeshi, you’ve been here your whole life. Three separate chains, completely different lengths, and they all end at the same table.
Takeshi: Exactly. And there’s one more dimension that I find the most profound.
Takeshi: We are alive at the same time.
Nicholas: …what?
Takeshi: I can’t have this conversation with Miyamoto Musashi. Catherine can’t ask questions of Lady Murasaki. The people who will be born a hundred years from now — they can’t sit here with us tonight.
The fact that we share the same narrow window of time on this planet is itself an extraordinary condition.
Most possible combinations of human beings will never meet, because they were never alive simultaneously.
Catherine: Oh wow. I’ve never thought about it that way. Like, we take it for granted that we exist at the same time, but that’s not… guaranteed at all.
Nicholas: Okay I’ll admit, that one actually hit differently. (pauses) I was thinking about Aaron Judge the other day — greatest pure hitter I’ve ever watched. And I get to see him play. My grandfather never did. And I’ll never get to see Babe Ruth. That window, that’s not nothing.
Takeshi: (smiling) Exactly. And the Japanese have a phrase for this that captures the full weight of it.
Catherine: Ichi-go ichi-e?
Takeshi: You know it?
Catherine: I’ve heard it, but I’m not sure I really understand it.
Takeshi: Ichi-go ichi-e. Literally, “one time, one meeting.” The idea comes from the tea ceremony tradition — the understanding that every gathering, every encounter, is singular. It will never occur again in exactly this form. These specific people, this specific moment, this specific combination of moods and weather and conversation — it exists once and then it’s gone.
Nicholas: That sounds exhausting. Like, how do you enjoy anything if you’re constantly thinking “this is the last time”?
Takeshi: It’s the opposite, actually. Or at least, that’s the intention.
Ichi-go ichi-e isn’t meant to create anxiety about endings. It’s meant to create genuine attention to what’s in front of you.
If you really understood, on a gut level, that this afternoon can’t be retrieved — would you be checking your phone?
Nicholas: (looks down at his phone) …touché.
Catherine: (laughing softly) He literally just picked it up.
Nicholas: I was checking the Yankee score! (puts it away) But fine. Fine. I hear you.
Catherine: Takeshi-san, can I ask something more personal? Do you actually feel this — en — when you meet people? Or is it more of an intellectual concept for you?
Takeshi: Honestly? Most of the time, it’s intellectual. I’m not going to pretend I walk around in a constant state of wonder. (laughs) I’m as distracted and irritable as anyone. But there are moments where it surfaces, and when it does, it’s disorienting in a good way.
Catherine: Like when?
Takeshi: When I visit a shrine in a place I’m traveling. I have a habit — I always stop at the local shrine and just… report in. “I’m here. I arrived safely. Thank you for the conditions that made this trip possible.” Not a prayer, exactly. More like an acknowledgment.
Nicholas: An acknowledgment to who, though? You’re talking to… rocks and trees?
Takeshi: (thinks for a moment) To whatever it is that accumulates. The en that made it happen. In Shinto thinking, everything has a spirit — kami. The land, the river, the old tree. When I stand at a shrine, I’m not making a transaction. I’m not asking for anything. I’m acknowledging that I exist within a web of relationships — with the place, with the history, with the conditions that allowed me to be standing there.
Nicholas: I was raised Catholic. Didn’t stick. And I definitely don’t think there’s someone up there running the show. But what you’re describing doesn’t sound like religion to me. It sounds more like…
gratitude with an address.
Takeshi: (laughs) I like that. “Gratitude with an address.” That’s actually closer to it than most theological explanations I’ve heard.
Catherine: What about inga ōhō though — the karma side of it? Because that part gets complicated. Like, if everything is cause and effect, does that mean bad things happen to people because of something they did? That feels harsh.
Takeshi: Yes, and that’s where it gets misunderstood — badly, sometimes. The popular Western version of karma is very transactional. “You were mean, so now something bad will happen to you.” That’s not the Buddhist view, or at least not a sophisticated reading of it. The idea is far more systemic and far more humble than that.
Nicholas: Meaning?
Takeshi: Meaning that causes and effects are so deeply interwoven, across so many lifetimes in Buddhist thinking, across so many people and systems, that we cannot trace any single event back to a single cause and call it justice. It’s not that simple. What we can observe is that our actions do generate consequences — for us, for others, for the social fabric we’re all embedded in. The cause matters. The intention matters. But you can’t point at a person’s suffering and say “they deserved this.”
Catherine: That’s more nuanced than how it’s usually talked about online.
Takeshi: Most profound things are.
Nicholas: Okay so here’s my very American question. If I accept all of this — en, cause and effect, ichi-go ichi-e — what do I do with it? What changes on Monday morning?
Takeshi: Honestly? Maybe nothing changes on the surface. You still have your 9 AM meeting. You still want the Yankees to win. (Nicholas snorts) But maybe — and I’m saying maybe — you move through the day with a slightly different awareness. That the colleague you find annoying also arrived at this moment through an unrepeatable chain of causes. That the meeting you’re dreading is happening once, and then it’s over, and something else begins.
Nicholas: You’re saying it changes the quality of attention, not the content of the day.
Takeshi: If anything, yes. And even that I can’t guarantee. I’m not selling a system here.
Catherine: I think what I’m taking from this is… there’s something almost comforting about en. Like, I spent so much energy wondering if I made the right choice coming to Japan. If it was going to “pay off.” But if I take the en idea seriously — I’m here because of everything that came before, and what I do here becomes part of everything that comes next. The question of whether it was the “right” choice kind of dissolves.
Takeshi: (nods slowly) That’s a very honest thing to say.
Nicholas: For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here. This conversation wouldn’t be the same without you asking the questions you ask.
Catherine: (smiles) Thanks, Nicholas-san. That actually means a lot.
Nicholas: Don’t go soft on me, I’ve got a call in twenty minutes.
We wrapped up shortly after. Nicholas left for his call. Catherine had reading to finish. I walked home through Fukushima, past the old shotengai, past the shrine on the corner where I sometimes stop in the mornings.
I didn’t stop that evening. But I noticed it. Which, maybe, is enough.
What to Take Away
The concept of en resists being turned into a productivity tip or a morning routine. That’s part of its value.
At its core, en asks us to take seriously what we usually dismiss as coincidence: that the people in our lives arrived there through complex, unrepeatable chains of cause and effect. That we share a moment in time with them that will never be reconstructed. That the conditions making any encounter possible — any conversation, any friendship, any creative collaboration — are more fragile and more remarkable than we usually let ourselves feel.
Ichi-go ichi-e isn’t a call to be sentimental about every moment. It’s an invitation to be less absent from them.
And inga ōhō — cause and effect — isn’t a cosmic scoreboard. It’s a reminder that what we do now becomes a condition for what comes next. For us, and for others who will never know our names.
None of this requires adopting a new religion or belief system. You don’t have to stand at a shrine. You don’t have to call it Buddhism, or Shinto, or anything at all.
You only have to sit, occasionally, with the strange fact that you are here — at this specific moment in history, alive at the same time as the people around you — and that this, quietly, is extraordinary.
SHIBUMIWORKS PROJECT explores Japanese philosophy through honest, unscripted conversation. Takeshi Kitagawa is a graphic and textile designer based in Osaka.