(Please Note: This is a long post I have broken up into three parts with photos in between!)
If I had to sum up Bali in one paragraph (hardly likely, huh?), it would start with a list: Gates, temples, shrines, offerings, walls, sarongs, flowers, petals, touts, deals, kharma, traffic... and rice -- on the table and in the fields.
We were trying to explain to our driver yesterday the meaning of the English word opposite (he asked) -- good/bad, black/white, rich/poor, north/south, good kharma/bad kharma etc -- but in my mind was also the contrast of Bali's philosophy of serenity and balance in a reality of hierarchy, obligation, caste, and constant hustling.
Although Tom and Bette Lee gave us the name of their driver, somehow he never got called. At Ubud Inn we had Gusti, for his connection to the coffee plantation owner, and here at Sagitarius, our room steward Eddie precipitated us toward "a friend with a car" -- Putu. In such a way, tourists are pulled into our place in the hierarchy.
I'm not sure Putu's tribal heritage, but he has an almond-shaped face, golden skin, and long slightly kinky hair he twists up in a tight bun or lets down according to some system I never deciphered. He drives a chocolate-colored Toyota vehicle the shape of a Ford Explorer, with standard transmission and more years on the road than most of the taxi fleet. The windows are heavily tinted so the polisi don't see that he has Western passengers in the back, because he does not have a full taxi license In other words, Putu is working hard to get ahead.
His English is pretty good, but like most people here, it's been learned on the fly and is not infallible. However he is keen to communicate especially when you ask questions about real life in Bali, or about all the Hindu paraphernalia we are constantly driving by.
Unlike the Indonesian islands we have visited previously which were, first predominantly Catholic (despite the loud mosques) -- Timor and Alor -- and later predominantly Muslim --Flores and Lombok --, Bali is 95% Hindu, but a Hinduism that is uniquely Balinese.
According to the Lonely Planet (my bible!), Balinese officially "worship the same gods as the Hindus of India --- the trinity of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu -- BUT they also have a supreme god, Sanghyang Widi." However, Lonely Planet goes on to say, that in general the trinity is "never seen" nor is Sanghyang Widi often worshipped, but that daily deference is paid to spirits that "are more animist than Hindu." This explains why a young guide at the Mother Temple talked of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu while Putu insisted that "there is only one God, one God!" It is all subject to interpretation, but you'd better not fall down on your daily offerings to the spirits whether you are a store keeper, a taxi driver, a restauranteur or well-to-do hotel owner. Kharma is precarious.
For example, we can delight in the simple charm of the typical daily offering -- a small square basket of plaited palm leaves filled with a flower, a tablespoon of rice, several tiny slices of chili, and often a stick of incense. In the morning, these are placed everywhere -- small shrines, niches in walls, on the sidewalk, or on the steps of a business establishment where patrons must step over and walk around. Today, a particularly holy day that repeats every 15 days, the offering were particularly prolific, heaped in piles that made getting down the sidewalk somewhat of an obstacle course.
Then there is the odd (to us) Balinese habit of dressing their statues in black and white checked sarongs and providing them with parasols. Statues are placed at gates, gates being anything you pass through to enter virtually any kind of a space. According to Putu they are there to provide "security," his English word for standing guard against unwanted spirits. This custom exists at doors to stores, hotels, restaurants, temples, and even villages. Dressing the statues is a "courtesy" (my word) you extend to the statues for special days and ceremonies, or longer if you can afford to do it.
The temple phenomenon is also something you can't really grasp until you've experienced it. Every village has its community temples, every house its family temples no matter how rustic, every temple its shrines, every shrine its offerings. The community's temples are the temple of origin, dedicated to the village's founders; another for the spirits that protect the village, and one for the dead.
Every family compound has much the same, a walled yard with a shrine for the gods to inhabit, one for the "head" (best translated to sanity and perhaps good sense), one for the spirits of the ancestors ("but not their bodies, you understand!), and some I'm still not sure of what/whom they are for...and neither, I suspect is Putu!
When you build a house, you must first build the family temple, and you must build it to the best degree you are able. The gods/spirits aren't greedy, but they will know if they've been stinted! Your returned kharma will be based on your investment, and as you make progress, then it's expected that some of your gain will be put into your shrines to upgrade them.
So as you drive around you see everywhere the industry this supports, the stone (or cast cement?) statues, the stone plinths, the shrine toppers in skeletal form, the elaborate carved panels that get added, the thick grass roofs, the fancy paint and gilt that get added. Where we might lust for a new flat panel TV, Putu lusts for a "quality" shrine topper made by the best craftsmen who are found on the slopes approaching Mt. Agung.
Please don't get the impression that I am belittling this. It just bewilders me, and yes, at the end of the day our American practicality hopes that the tip we leave goes to school books for the kids and not to a fancier shrine. But one has to respect utterly the structure all this gives to a very definite way of life.
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