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Balinese Religion
Balinese Temples:
Powerful
Places on The Sacred Landscape
Visitors to Bali who
are lucky enough to witness an authentic Balinese ceremony
are sure never to forget the experience. From the
spectacular creativity and complexity of the offerings
presented to the gods as gifts to the extravagant color of
the ritual costumes worn by the worshippers, from the
silvery tones of the gamelan gong orchestra to the
melodious sound of the priest ringing bells and chanting
mantras, from the heavy perfume of the incense rising up to
the heavens to the delicious aroma of traditional delicacies
being prepared, a Balinese ceremony is a fabulous feast for
all the senses.
Dealing with the Dark Side
Balinese ceremonies can be divided into five general
categories. The first of these are the Bhuta Yadnya,
ceremonies of exorcism or cleansing held to ward off the
demons and other negative forces that inhabit Bali. These
demons, called bhuta kala, are the dark side of the
Balinese spiritual universe. Although their main home is in
the world of the unseen, they sometimes pay visits to
unlucky humans, assuming a fearsome array of forms. There
are fanged demons, demons with bald heads and bulging eyes,
demons who look like walking trees or long tailed monkeys.
There are even demons consisting of only a leg - or two or
three - strolling down a lonely, moonless road in the middle
of the night. Some more enlightened philosophers say these
demons are simply symbolic, representing the negative pole
of the universe and the destructive energies - the greed,
the passion and the ugliness - that exist within humankind.
But to most Balinese, these are real life spooks, and those
who stumble upon their haunts - the midnight crossroads, the
isolated river bank, the deserted cemetery - or who fail to
make the appropriate offerings to appease their ravenous
hunger risk falling prey to their dark influence. Even in
today’s modern Bali, where parents send their children for
Western-style education and where hospitals boast the latest
life-saving equipment, misfortune and illness are thought to
derive not from germs or bad luck but from black magic, the
result of angry or jealous neighbors manipulating these dark
forces.
To keep these demons from
turning their destructive energies upon humankind, and to
realign the balance of good and evil in the world, Bhuta
Yadnya rituals are held. They range from the small everyday
act of placing offerings to feed the demons around one’s
house and yard to the most elaborate ceremony of the
century: the 1979 Eka Dasa Rudra when Balinese from all
corners of the island descended upon the “mother temple”
of Besakih to conduct a complex series of rituals that would
rebalance the entire universe. One especially important
cleansing ceremony takes place every year, on the day before
Nyepi, the Balinese Day of Silence. Called the Taur Agung,
or “Great Sacrifice,” this ceremony cleanses the island
of the malevolent influences that have accumulated over the
preceding year through the use of sacred substances such as
holy water and the blood of animals killed as ritual
sacrifices. At the close of the ceremony, people roam
through the villages beating drums and gongs to scare off
the demons.
Calling the Gods down to
Earth
The second group of ceremonies in Bali are the Dewa Yadnya,
rituals to worship the gods and divine ancestors. The most
common and colorful of these ceremonies are the odalan,
or temple anniversaries, when the deities are welcomed down
to earth to visit their human followers. Because each
Balinese can claim allegiance to at least three village
temples, plus the temples for his or her clan, extended
family or traditional irrigation association, most visitors
to Bali can expect their trip to coincide with such a
ceremony. Depending on the temple, different customs
prevail, but all odalan, as welcoming ceremonies for the
divine, include an array of entertainments, gifts and food
for the gods and ancestors who sit in seats especially made
for the occasion. Gamelan music is played and sacred dances
performed to please the gods with their beauty and grace. A
lavish banquet of offerings is laid out, consisting of
gorgeous handcrafted creations made of fruits, flowers,
rice, sculpted rice dough and colored cookies. Priests chant
prayers and clouds of fragrant incense are sent up to the
heavens to provide a ladder for the gods to descend by.
Everyone who has a tie to the temple attends, dressed in
their most exquisite traditional finery, to pray, catch up
with family gossip, see how much the children have grown
and, of course, to feast on the delicious ritual food made
especially for the occasion. Temple anniversaries are joyous
events, celebrating another year of the gods’ blessings
and solidifying the sense of community and shared heritage
so vital to Balinese culture.
The next category of Balinese
ceremonies are the Resi Yadnya, or rituals to ordain
priests, called pedanda in Balinese. Pedandas come
from the Brahmana caste, with the exception of priests from
the Pasek, Pande and Sungguh castes, who have their own
ritual specialists. To become a priest, a man must first
devote himself to years of study of the esoteric texts of
Balinese religion and of the complex rituals Balinese life
requires. After he has mastered the necessary knowledge, a
ceremony is held during which he symbolically dies, is
cremated, and is reborn. Thus consecrated and equipped with
a store of ancient knowledge, he is now able to perform
rituals himself. In Bali, priests must marry, and their
wives are ordained with them. The wife of a priest will help
her husband with ritual preparations and may, after her
husband’s death, act as a priest herself.
Celebrating the Cycle of
Life
The last class of Balinese ceremonies are the Manusa
Yadnya or life cycle rituals, held to mark the stages of
human development from the innocent, godlike child to the
fully responsible adult. All these ceremonies are designed
to help a person mature physically, socially and
spiritually, by purifying and protecting them from negative
influences, increasing their inner strength and integrating
them into the community that will provide them support and
sustenance as they grow.
The first of the Manusa
Yadnya ceremonies is performed immediately following the
birth of a baby. This ritual is directed at the newborn’s kanda
empat or four spiritual siblings, represented by the
umbilical cord, the blood, the vernix caseosa and the
placenta. These siblings will protect the vulnerable baby if
treated properly, and will continue to influence the child
as it grows. The placenta is buried in front of the house,
the spot marked with a stone, and offerings made to it to
ensure the protection of the spiritual siblings. The next
ceremony is the kepus pungsed, when the baby’s
umbilical cord drops off. The cord is placed inside an
offering shaped like a dove and hung over the baby’s bed,
from where the spiritual siblings can look after the child.
A shrine for the god Kumara, the guardian of all children,
is also placed in the baby’s room and regular offerings
made to it to ensure the god’s protection. The Balinese
believe that babies are the reincarnation of their
ancestors. But unlike in Hindu India, in Bali reincarnation
generally takes place within families. After the umbilical
cord falls off, the parents of the baby go to visit a balian,
or psychic, who can tell them whose spirit has come back to
earth to walk in the body of the child. Often the child is
the reincarnation of a beloved grandmother or
great-grandfather, making the birth a reunion with dear
figures from the past, cementing close family relationships
across generations.
Until three months after his
or her birth, the newborn baby is considered to still be
part of the realm of the gods, having just descended to
earth. The child will often be spoken to in the most polite
level of the Balinese language, and offered the respect one
would show a divine guest. In traditional Balinese culture,
the baby is not even allowed to touch the ground, for the
earth would pollute its holy state. It is only after three
Balinese months (105 days), when a ceremony is held to
welcome the child to earth, that the baby is considered to
be fully human. At this ceremony, the baby is dressed in a
miniature version of Balinese ceremonial costume, complete
with sarong and sash wrapped around its waist, and is given
a name. An effigy of the child is made, which the mother
carries like a baby as part of the ritual. The image is then
thrown away, with the hope that any evil spirits lingering
nearby will be confused and, mistaking the effigy for the
real child, will turn their destructive energies on the
image instead. White string is tied around the baby’s
wrist and placed on the baby’s head, the long lengths of
cotton representing a long, healthy life. The baby is also
given his or her first jewelry: little silver or gold
bracelets and anklets, and a silver box containing a piece
of the umbilical cord to wear around the neck. This amulet
offers the baby protection from evil spirits and black magic
that might attack the still vulnerable child.
After six Balinese months (35
days each), the baby has its first “birthday” or otonan.
This is often a large, lavish ceremony, with hundreds of
guests in attendance. Even people of modest means may spend
millions of rupiah on preparing a huge feast for their
community and honoring the gods with elaborate offerings.
Often traditional music performances will be held, or even a
wayang kulit shadow puppet play. At this ceremony,
the baby is allowed to touch the earth for the first time. A
lock of the baby’s hair is cut by the priest, and many
families even shave the whole head, believing that the hair
will grow back thicker and fuller afterwards. A small silver
disk is placed over the soft spot on the baby’s head to
protect it from evil spirits. Like the other birth
ceremonies, the otonan ritual is meant to ask the
gods for their help in protecting the child, and to give the
baby health and strength to withstand its new challenges as
a growing human being. It also is a community celebration, a
welcoming of yet another member into its midst,
strengthening the ties that link families together across
the generations.
The next ceremony to mark the
life cycle is the famous Balinese tooth filing. This ritual
is held on the edge of adulthood, as the child enters
puberty. Tooth filing, despite its scary sounding name, is
actually a ceremony of beauty, health and purification,
designed to rid humans of the six vices: lust, greed, anger,
drunkenness, confusion and jealousy. Like so many Balinese
rituals, this ceremony works to bring different parts of the
world into balance, in this case the world of the spirit and
the world of the flesh, the microcosmos of the human body
and the macrocosmos of the social environment. Modifying the
body by filing down the sharp canine teeth, which symbolize
animality, passion and coarse emotions, the soul of the
young person is believed to be better equipped to exercise
the self-control necessary to become a fully adult and
responsible member of society. The Balinese, who dislike
anything coarse and animal-like, find long, pointed teeth
unattractive, and the tooth filing is also a beautification
ritual, preparing young adults to find a partner and marry.
The young candidates for the
ceremony are first dressed in the most lavish traditional
costumes the family can afford, including cloth woven with
gold threads, gold leaf hair decorations and fresh tropical
flowers. The priest blesses them with holy water, draws
sacred symbols on their teeth, and then gets to work with
the file. As the family crowds around to offer their support
and encouragement and the gamelan plays a distracting
rhythm, the upper row of front teeth are filed down, leaving
the filee a bit shaken, perhaps, but newly beautiful and
spiritually strengthened.
Tooth filing is considered a
crucial ritual that every Balinese must undergo. It is also
an expensive one, however, involving musicians, a priest to
perform the filing, food for guests, a huge array of
offerings and the finest clothes for the person whose teeth
are being filed. Thus many families will postpone the
ceremony, or hold the ceremony for several children at once.
Some people wait so long that they die with their teeth
unfiled, in which case the ritual becomes part of the
cremation preparations.
The next life cycle ceremony
that most Balinese will experience is marriage. Not so long
ago, most marriages in Bali were arranged matches, with the
parents of the prospective bride and groom choosing a spouse
for their sons and daughters based on practical
considerations such as wealth, compatibility of caste, and
family ties. The preferred marriage partner was actually a
relative - cousins who were the children of two brothers or
second cousins who were the children of two male cousins
related through their fathers were thought to be the perfect
match. Because Balinese society follows a pattern that
anthropologists call “patrilineal,” with inheritance and
temple membership being passed down through the male line,
these practices assured that the daughter, and her future
children, would be kept within the family. Brides and grooms
would often be called to wed with little notice and little
choice. Those who were set on choosing their own partners
could be married by elopement, a traditional form of
marriage where the bride and groom would spend a night
together at a friend’s house before holding a simple
ceremony to legalize their union. But refusing the chosen
partner often meant ostracism by one’s family, a very
serious threat in a highly communal society like Bali’s.
In those days, romantic love was not considered to be the
basis for marriage. Marriage was a working partnership,
where husband and wife joined together to raise children,
labor to provide for them, and to fulfill their
responsibilities to the community and the gods. Sometimes
men would take second or even third wives for love, or in
cases where the first wife was unable to bear children, in
matches that were held without the parent’s arranging.
Today, while arranged marriages do sometimes still occur,
especially in high caste families, for the most part modern
love has taken over. Influenced by television love stories
and by changing attitudes toward traditional values like
caste, most young Balinese are determined to choose their
own partners. Elopements are rare, for the government
considers them to be unethical, and because most modern
families have come to accept the idea that in a modern,
democratic society young people should be free to choose.
But despite these social
changes, wedding ceremonies have lost none of their
spectacular beauty and fascinating symbolism. The morning of
their wedding the bride and groom are dressed in exquisite
and elaborate traditional costumes of hand woven cloth and
gold. The groom may wear a magical keris dagger at
his side, while the bride is crowned with a stunning
headdress made of thin gold leaves, interwoven with fresh
fragrant flowers. During the ceremony, the couple is blessed
with holy water, incense and flower blossoms. A complex
array of offerings to the gods is laid out to ask the divine
powers for their blessings on the new union, and to purify
the bride and groom so they may unite to produce healthy,
happy children. Symbols of fertility, including eggs and
rice, are used, and in the portion of the ritual sure to
bring laughs and jokes from the crowd, the groom takes his keris
dagger and pierces a mat woven from bamboo that symbolizes
his bride’s virginity. These days, it is not unusual for
the traditional ceremony to be followed by a modern,
western-style reception, often for hundreds of friends and
family. After marriage, the man and woman are now considered
to be full members of the community, and must participate in
the activities of the banjar, the traditional village
association.
Closing the Cycle of Life
The last of the life
cycle rituals is the one that closes the circle, returning
the soul of the human being to the world of the divine, from
where it can be born again. This ritual is, of course, the
Balinese cremation. Tourists who are lucky enough to witness
one of Bali’s spectacular cremation ceremonies may not
realize that this ritual they are watching is but one short
segment of an incredibly complex chain of ceremonial events
that may take weeks or even months to prepare for. Because
the cremation ceremony is meant to not merely dispose of the
body but to send the soul of the deceased on the path toward
becoming a deified ancestor who can send blessings to his or
her family on earth before eventually being born again in
the community, no expense is spared in performing these
ceremonies. It is not unusual for a family to pay thousands
of dollars for even a modest ceremony, and the cremations of
former royal family members and priests may cost tens of
thousands of dollars to prepare and require the labor of
hundreds of people working around the clock for weeks.
Because of this tremendous cost, some families may bury the
body temporarily while they try to raise enough resources or
until they can join in a large ceremony held by a wealthy
family, paying a contribution to have their own deceased
relative cremated at the same time.
Cremation preparations begin
once the death is announced to the village by sounding the kulkul,
the bell hung from the rafters of the village meeting hall.
Hearing this traditional summons, family members gather to
wash the body and, if it is to be buried, to wrap it in a
cloth and transport it to the ceremony. If the cremation is
to be held as soon as possible, the body will be placed in a
pavilion of the family home, where it must be guarded around
the clock, offerings placed regularly before it and food and
drink offered to it as symbolic sustenance for the deceased,
whose soul is believed to still be lingering around its
body. Men from the village gather every night to share this
guard duty, drinking, smoking and frequently gambling into
the early hours of the morning. A festive atmosphere
prevails over the inevitable sadness, for the preparations
are already underway to send the soul of the beloved friend
or family member on to the realm of the divine ancestors,
releasing it from the burdens of the world until its next
rebirth. A priest is consulted who decides on an auspicious
day for the ceremony, and an array of women ritual
specialists begins the work of constructing the thousands of
offerings to the gods that will be required for the rituals.
The house compound is decorated, and food is prepared for
everyone who has come to lend their help. When the day of
the cremation finally arrives, the body is carried to the
traditional cremation grounds in a huge tower constructed of
wood and covered with colorful decorations, supported on the
shoulders of dozens of men. Forming a huge procession, the
cremation tower is followed by a wooden sarcophagus shaped
and decorated to resemble an animal - a bull, cow, lion or
deer, depending on the caste of the deceased. This
sarcophagus is the vehicle for the soul, which has already
detached itself from its material form. A gamelan orchestra
marches along with a group of women carrying the necessary
offerings on their heads. An electric atmosphere of
excitement and tension fills the air as the procession
passes along, and the tower is spun in crazy circles
designed to confuse the soul so it does not come back to
haunt the family.
One the procession reaches
the cremation grounds, the body is placed inside the animal
sarcophagus, along with piles of cloth and offerings. Holy
water is poured over the body, the sarcophagus closed, and
wood packed around it. The priest lights the fire, and
begins chanting prayers and ringing his sacred bell to help
the soul along its journey. After the fire is spent, bone
fragments are removed from the ashes and shaped into an
effigy of the body, which is then placed in a special
offering and carried in a procession to the sea. One the
physical body has been returned to the elements of which is
was composed - water, air, fire, earth and space - a series
of ceremonies is held to purify the soul of the deceased and
make a place for him or her in the group of divine
ancestors. Only now, with the cycle of life finally closed
and the ritual work completed, can everyone rest. The
deceased is now a divine ancestor, who will continue to
visit with their family on earth, bringing aid in times of
trouble and receiving offerings and prayers, until the next
rebirth when the cycle begins again.
Offerings: Glorious Gifts
to the Gods, Ancestors and Demons
Visitors to Bali are certain to be impressed by the glorious
combinations of art and piety that are Balinese offerings.
From the simplest palm leaf baskets containing a few flower
blossoms and pieces of betel nut that are placed around the
house yard each evening to the huge, elaborate sculptures of
fruit, flowers and dyed rice dough figurines that women
carry on their heads to give to the gods at temple
festivals, offerings are one of the most colorful sights in
Bali, as well as being an essential aspect of the Balinese
relationship with the divine. By making offerings and
presenting them to the gods, ancestors and demons who
inhabit the unseen world, the Balinese express their faith,
their artistic genius and their intimate relationship with
their environment.
The practice of making
offerings to the gods is mentioned in the Mahabarata, the
ancient Indian epic which is one of the major texts of the
Hindu religion. In the famous passage known as the Bhagavad
Gita, the god Krishna instructs the hero Arjuna to offer
leaves, flowers, fruits or water to god as an expression of
love and purity of purpose. Of course, if you ask a Balinese
why she makes offerings, she will most likely respond with a
simple answer: she, like her mother and her grandmother
before her, makes offerings because that is what Balinese
must do. Unless the woman is the wife of a priest or a
priest herself and learned in the esoteric texts of Balinese
Hinduism, offerings are so woven into the fabric of everyday
life in Bali as to be taken for granted. Even in today’s
Bali, where the modern world makes its presence felt through
television, mass media and tourism, the practice of offering
gifts to the gods has not diminished. A busy career woman
may choose to buy ready made offerings in the market rather
than to craft them at home herself, but virtually no Hindu
Balinese would feel safe in a house where offerings were not
regularly placed.
The most common form of
offering in Bali is called a canang. These are little
trays made of folded palm leaves, filled with bits of rice,
banana, colored flowers and a small package of betel nut and
leaves. These are the basic daily offerings which the woman
of the household places each evening at the shrines and
powerful spots that mark the house and yard. Like all
offerings, canang are both material objects and
spiritual ones, existing in both the world of the seen and
the unseen. Placing the canang in the shrine, the
worshipper uses a stick of burning incense and three
graceful waves of her right hand to waft the spiritual
essence, or sari, of the offering up to the gods
where it is then consumed. Smaller offerings are placed on
the ground, and water sprinkled upon them for the demons.
Having thus eaten and drank, it is hoped that these
creatures will protect the house and its inhabitants instead
of turning their mischievous magic upon them. Dozens of
other varieties of special offerings are also made to mark
particular days in the Balinese calendar, for temple
festivals and for life cycle rituals, some of which are
incredibly complex creations taking days to produce. One the
offering has been presented to the gods, it may not be used
again for ritual purposes, although once the gods have
consumed the essence, humans may take the fruits and snacks
contained in them home to eat themselves.
One of the most fascinating
aspects of Balinese culture is its incredible variety, and
the making of offerings is no exception. Shapes, forms and
ingredients will vary from one village to the next, with
certain areas of the island renowned for their spectacular
specialties. But almost all offerings, no matter where they
are made and for what occasion they are to be used, share
the same basic symbolism. All Balinese offerings are made of
natural, perishable materials. Small cones of rice represent
the cosmic mountain, eggs and coconuts represents the
fertility of the earth and its inhabitants, while fruits
evoke the bounty of the land. Flowers occupy a special place
in Balinese religious devotion as a symbol of beauty and
purity, and one form of prayer in Bali consists of the
worshipper taking a few blooms from an offering and holding
them up to the gods while asking for forgiveness and
blessings. Taking these natural gifts of the gods,
fashioning them into beautiful handmade creations, and then
giving them back to the deities as thanks for their good
will and protection, Balinese ritual closes the circle of
life connecting humans, their environment and the divine.
In Balinese society, where
women and men work together in the fields, share the raising
of their children, and hold joint responsibility for
providing the household with income, the practice of making
offerings is unique in that it is almost entirely the domain
of women. While many Balinese ceremonies are presided over
by priests, it is almost always a group of women - generally
elderly experts armed with the benefit of years of practice
- who run the show from the sidelines, directing the
worshippers, and placing the offerings in the correct spots
to ensure the flow of the ritual. The techniques for
cutting, folding and weaving palm leaves, shaping colored
rice dough into complicated sculptural creations, and, most
crucially, knowing how to combine different ingredients to
make offerings for different purposes and occasions, is
practical knowledge handed down from mothers to daughters,
who learn by watching and imitating. The preparation of
offerings is often a social occasion, with groups of
relatives or neighbors gathering together to share the work
and to ease the boredom of the repetitive activity by
joking, gossiping or nowadays even watching a favorite soap
opera. This crucial ritual work demands patience, artistry,
knowledge, and a strong commitment to one’s religion and
society. One anthropologist studying women’s ritual labor
found that women spend, on average, 1800 hours a year
engaged in such work, as well as devoting some 20% of their
household income to it. Some women complain that these
ritual responsibilities make it difficult for them to leave
the home to educate themselves or find paid employment, but
few go so far as to see the making of offerings as time
poorly spent. An offering is a sacrifice of oneself - of one’s
time, one’s creativity, and one’s material resources -
and when given with a pure heart, it is believed to win the
blessings of the gods, the help of the divine ancestors and
protection from the malevolence of the demons. Without
offerings and the intimate relationship with the unseen
world that they represent, most Balinese agree that Bali
would no longer be Bali.
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