Ode to our Japanese Bath

In the Fall 2025 newsletter, Whitelaw Roshi introduces the concept of “islands of coherence,” describing how small points of coherence in the midst of chaos can, under certain circumstances, create larger forms of order. I would nominate the outdoor Japanese bath at Spring Green Dojo as such an island. Seemingly a roughly constructed place for bathing, its impact goes far beyond that. I’ve come to realize that it embodies how the things we build reinforce how we teach. In effect, our Japanese bath embodies the three core values of Chosei Zen: healing, resilience, and beauty.

One reason for having such a bath is that it is a centuries-old answer to the question of how to get as many people as possible clean with the most efficient use of resources, meaning water and firewood. For example, with 100 gallons of water and 20 pounds of firewood, you can get 25 tired and dirty people clean in the hour between the end of the work day and the start of dinner.

But the deeper reason is that it offers a deeply satisfying and beautiful way to get clean in all senses of the word. For example, it has been a long and cold day of working in the woods. I’m sitting sheltered in a tub with very hot water up to my chin, and it is snowing. Big lazy flakes coming down in the deep quiet of dusk. I’m looking uphill into the forest and a deer comes by, ten yards away, carefully picking its way through the snow, not noticing me. That cold day of hard work melts away.

This experience points to what I call “the elegance of not enough.” By that I mean the beauty that arises over centuries in the design of structures and processes when faced with constraints. You donʻt have unlimited water; you donʻt have unlimited firewood; you donʻt have unlimited lumber for construction. But you do have a lot of people who not only need to get clean but who need bone-deep release of muscles after hard work if they are soon to face another day of hard work.

So, how does such a place teach our values?

HEALING – Zen training is a lonely process. The effort you put into it is yours alone. But paradoxically perhaps, you feel in your body the effort that everybody else is putting into their training. The bath teaches that by mandating that everyone cleans themselves outside of the tub using just three buckets of water – one for getting wet, one for soaping up, one for rinsing. This means that the last person entering the bath should enjoy the same experience as the first person entering the bath.

In Zen training the primary healing is a healing of duality, meaning healing separateness, healing a sense that you and me are two very different objects in space. Sharing is a kind of healing, caring for others is a form of healing. You learn that from the bath.

RESILIENCE - For us, resilience means the ability to work with strength, sensitivity, and creativity under any conditions for the service of others. Resilience is not an abstract virtue, but a visceral condition that is highly trainable.

It may sound strange to link resilience and comfort in one sentence but time in a Japanese bath provides both elements. It is natural to need comfort of a deeply-rooted type in order to face whatever happens next. It could be a scrub down in the open air and a three-minute soak up to your chin in hot, hot water. That can be “just enough” that helps you carry on for another twenty-four hours of hard Zen training.

BEAUTY – When working hard in construction or logging, when training formally in Zen meditation, there is not much time for relaxation. There is too much that needs to get done. But the quality of relaxation doesnʻt need to be measured by length of time. It can be measured by the degree to which all senses are satisfied, which is one way to define beauty. The smell of white cedar when hot water is poured over it. The view of a maple tree at the height of autumn when drying yourself off. The feel of gravity in a post meeting rock.

Beauty also goes beyond the senses. An elegant solution to a problem is beautiful. We know when something is just right – nothing more, nothing less – and that experience takes us out of ourselves.

We bathe, and something bigger happens. Beauty, healing, and resilience become part of a world that needs them all.