Zen circle meaning series#

“Japanese dictionaries define ikigai in such terms as ikiru hariai, yorokobi, meate ( something to live for, the joy and goal of living) and ikite iru dake no neuchi, ikite inu kōfuku, rieki ( a life worth living, the happiness and benefit of being alive).”¹.At present, kai is generally written in hiragana (Japanese phonetic syllabery)… Iki refers to ‘ life‘ kai is a suffix meaning roughly ‘ the realization of what one expects and hopes for.'”¹ “The term ikigai is composed of: iki and kai.

There’s no direct translation of ikigai into English, but the most legitimate definitions I’ve found are the following (emphasis added in bold): They are individual desires of humans as spiritual beings.”² “Needs associated with ikigai are not simply equal to the desires for biological satisfaction or the desires of humans as social creatures.“Ikigai, which is the highest level of desire, may be considered to be essentially the processes of cultivating one’s inner potential or that which makes one’s life significant.”.“The desire for what the Japanese call ikigai is a universal human experience.”.We’ll dive into the various ikigai definitions and diagrams, but what makes this concept so popular? This short article has some great insights that I’ve included in this post-it provides a unique perspective on ikigai before the turn of the century, social media proliferation, and the Westernization of the term.Ī decade later in 2009, Dan Buettner gave a TED Talk about his research on the Blue Zones-this officially catapulted ikigai into mainstream popularity. I’ve previously investigated the Ikarians from the Blue Zone in Ikaria, Greece, but ikigai comes from the Blue Zone in Okinawa, Japan. In 1999, a paper was published in Age and Ageing titled “‘Ikigai’ in older Japanese people”². “The term has a long history, appearing as far back as the fourteenth-century Taiheiki, as well as in such early twentieth-century works as Natsume Sōseki’s 1912 novel Kōjin but the contemporary Japanese works on ikigai that I’ve studied say little about the history of the term or about ikigai as conceived in the past.”¹.Mathews first came across the word ikigai in the 1980s while living in Japan and believes: The earliest online mention I can find of ikigai is from 1996-Gordon Mathews published a book titled What Makes Life Worth Living? How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds (you can access a sample of this book in footnote 1). The Origin of Ikigai & Rise in Popularity After studying the concept for a bit, my understanding is that the correct pronunciation of ikigai is ee-kee-guy ( not icky-guy or eye-key-guy). My hope with this post is to give you the truth about ikigai.īefore we dive in too deep, let’s start with the correct pronunciation.

Needless to say, it’s a hot topic today.īut, what is ikigai really? Like most things, there’s a lot of misinformation floating around on the internet. Or, maybe you’ve seen the four-circle diagram. The True Meaning of Ikigai: Definitions, Diagrams & Myths about the Japanese Life Purpose

Zen circle meaning series#

Links to the remainder of the series are listed at the bottom of this post. This is the first post in an ikigai series. The new ikigai eBook is live! It covers an updated version of this post and everything I’ve learned about ikigai over the last five years - Ikigai 2.0: A Step-by-Step Guidebook to Finding Life Purpose & Making Money Meaningfully (+ Bonus Workbook)