Bali - II

In my previous entry, I explored how the fact of knowing one's place in society could add to a sense of stability and reduce a certain amount of agitation that we experience in the west. 

I think it's more than that, though.  I think the commingling of the spiritual with the mundane also has a lot to do with the Balinese contentment. I have always seen a large barrier between the spiritual and the religious, and an even larger barrier between the religious and the secular.  Here, I don't believe either of those barriers exist.

There is more to this feeling than just the omnipresence of the shrines and temples and offerings you see everywhere.  Although... it really is remarkable how dense the landscape is with these artifacts. Shrines are stuck into every possible corner, poking up behind the walls of family compounds, huge monuments to the Hindu gods in the center of intersections, giving protection to travelers. Rice fields during harvest have large offerings set up to ask the goddess of rice the permission to take the grain from the ground. Rice fields during planting, have offerings to the same goddess to help make fertile the seeds.

Our driver, Made, makes it clear that the Hindu religion does not worship many gods, but only one god, with many names.  The way he talks makes me think of a well run business, with one brand and identity, but many workers scurrying around taking care of the enterprise.  You go to different departments to get the job done, but the transactions are always with the company as a whole.  It makes sense, actually.

The shrines have umbrellas to keep the gods cool and protected, and many of them are wrapped with black and white plaid cloth.  I also started seeing many huge old trees with their trunks wrapped in cloth.  When we asked Made about this, he said it's because some of the trees are spirit trees and the cloth honors that.

Then there are the offerings.  Little baskets made of banana leaves and palm fronds are filled with rice and flowers and any other things that may be deemed delectable to the gods, arranged with beautiful mosaic symmetry and left everywhere.  On the sand at the beach, in corners, on the intersection monuments, all over the shrines.  Flower petals are left in places that will delight the eye: on the steps of stair ways, aligned along the edges of fountains, on pillows, behind ears.  Beauty is created for beauty's sake.  Shallow vessels of water can be found in front of restaurants and other businesses, with mosaics of flower petals creating beautiful patterns. Even when we had our massages, there was a bowl of sand placed under our massage table face rest, with a pattern of shells and seeds arranged for our pleasure if we opened our eyes during the massage.  For no reason other than beauty.

For no reason other than beauty... and to honor and befriend the gods.  This is amazing to me.  Significant time is spent daily on these offerings, and there is no profit motive in them at all. Making the gods happy is, of course, something that is for self interest, but not at all in the way we usually think of self interest.  Our self interest usually has a dollar sign attached somewhere. But this does not.  This is all about beauty, and dedication to one's own system of religious beliefs.

It spills out everywhere.  There is incense in the air, and the aroma of flowers. There is the sound of the gamelan playing from the temples and from homes, a music so sweet and so poignant that it's like the aural equivalent of the frangipani blossoms that spill over the sides of fountains and rivers.

The air itself is rich with the spirits of the gods, the ancestors, the remnants of the pagan deities that used to inhabit this island. There is a commingling between air and water and earth, between the life of the spirit and the life of the practical world. Even the homes resist hard boundaries, with their open architecture that removes walls and windows and brings the outside in, and the inside out, and removes the distinction between the two.

More soon.