MA
What Ma (間) actually is
Ma is a Japanese concept that's difficult to translate into a single
English word, but it roughly means "the meaningful space or
pause between things," a charged, intentional interval that gives
everything around it shape and significance.
The character itself (間) is made of "gate" (門) with "sun" (日) inside it. Traditionally, it reads as sunlight streaming through the gap in a gate, which is a fitting image: Ma is the gap that lets something through.
Ma isn't an empty space to fill, waste, or rush past.
Ma · The space between
The bath as pause.
We chose to look for it in the bath. Long before it was a wellness ritual, ofuro, the Japanese practice of unhurried bathing, was simply a body, water, and nothing asked. Only the space to be still for a while. Somaé exists to hold that space on purpose. We set out to keep bathing deliberate.
Stay in the practice.
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