Bali Religion Information.

Bali Religion
The Balinese are nominally Hindus but Balinese Hinduism is half a world away from that India. When the Majapahits evacuated to Bali they took with them their religion and its rituals as well as their art, literature, music and culture. It’s a mistake, however, to think that this was purely an exotic seed planted or virgin soil. The Balinese already had strong religious beliefs and active cultural life; the new influences were simply overlaid on existing practices – hence the peculiar Balinese interpretation of Hinduism.

The Balinese worship the some Gods as the Hindus of India – the trinity of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu – but they also have a supreme God, Sanghyang Widhi. Unlike in India, the trinity is always alluded to, never seen – a vacant shrine or empty throne tells all. Nor is Sanghyang Widi often worshipped, though villagers may pray to him when settled new land and are about to build a new village; his image appears at the top of many temple shrines and on magic amulets. Other Hindus Gods such as Ganesh, Shiva’s, elephant- headed son, may occasionally appear, but a great many purely Balinese Gods, spirits and entities have far more everyday reality.

Funerals
Religion in Bali has two overwhelming features - it's absolutely everywhere and it's good fun. Even a funeral is an amazing, colorful, noisy and exciting event - a stark contrast to the solemn ceremony practiced in the west.

A Balinese funeral is a happy occasion since it represents the destruction of the body and the release of the soul so that it can be united with the supreme God. The body is carried to the cremation ground in a high multi-tiered tower made of bamboo, paper, string, tinsel, silk, cloth, mirrors, flowers and anything else bright and colorful. Carried on the shoulders of a group of men, the tower represents the cosmos and the base, in the shape of a turtle entwined by two snakes, symbolizes the foundation of the world. On the base is an open platform where the body is placed in the space between heaven and earth. The size of the group carrying the body and the number of tiers on the tower varies according to the caste of the deceased.

On the way to the cremation ground the tower is shaken and run around in circles to disorientate the spirit of the deceased so that it can not find is way home. A gamelan sprint along behind providing a suitably exciting musical accompaniment and camera-toting tourists almost gets trampled. At the cremation ground the body is transferred to a funeral sarcophagus and the whole lot – funeral tower, sarcophagus, body – goes up in flames. The eldest son does his duty by poking through the ashes to ensure there are no bits of body let unborn. Finally the colorful procession heads to the sea (or a nearby river if the sea is too far away) to scatter the ashes.

Other Bali Information
	Bali Behaviour There are a couple of rules for visiting temples. Except on rare occasions anyone can enter, anytime; there’s nothing like the attitude found in some temples in India where non-Hindus are firmly barred from entry. Now do you have to go barefoot like in many Buddhist shrines, but you are expected to be politely dressed. You should always wear a temple scarf – a sash tied loosely around your waist
	Bali Architecture Balinese temples usually consist of a series of courtyards entered from the sea side. In a large temple the outer gateway will generally be a candi bentar, modeled on the old Hindu temple of Java. These gateways resemble a tower cut in the halves and moved apart, courtyard is used for less important ceremonies,
	Bali Dance In fact it’s remarkably like the Balinese gamelan music which accompanies most dances, with its abrupt shifts of tempo, its dramatic changes between silence and crashing noise. There’s also virtually no contact in Balinese dancing, with each dancer moving completely independently.
	Bali Economy Bali’s economy is basically agrarian. The vast majority of Balinese are peasants working in the fields. Coffee, copra and cattle are major agricultural exports, while most of the rice grown goes to feed the island’s own teeming population.Unlike most island people, the Balinese are not great seafarers.........
	Bali Festival Festivals for much of the year Balinese temples are deserted, empty spaces. But on holy days, the deities and ancestral spirits descend from heaven to visit their devotees and the temples come alive with days of frenetic activity and nights of drama and dance. Temple festivals come at least once a Balinese year of 210 days.
	Bali Geography Bali is a tiny, extremely fertile and dramatically mountainous island. It has an area of 5620 square km, is only 140 km by 80 km and is just 8^ south of the equator. Bali’s central mountain chain, which runs east-west the whole length of the island, includes several peaks over 2000 meters and many active volcanoes......
	Bali Compound The smallest unit in the Balinese community is not the individual but the family. In the strictest sense of the word a family is a married couple with children and the broader sense a family is all the people who live in one compound, family compound. In one such compound there can live brothers, cousins and second cousins with all their children and all relatives who worship in one common house temple.
	Bali Households Despite the strong communal nature of Balinese society, their traditional houses are designed to divide the family from the outside world. Traditional houses (many of which can be seen in Ubud) are like houses in ancient Rome, they look inward and are surrounded by a high wall.....
	Bali Temple The number of temple in Bali is simply astonishing they’re everywhere, in fact since every village has several and every home at least a simple house-temple; there are actually more temples than homes. The word for temple in Bali is pura
	Bali Village Organisation Village organization one of the important element of the village government is the Subak. Each individual rice field is known as a Sawah and each farmer who owns even one Sawah must be a member of his local Subak. The rice paddies must have a steady supply of water and it is the job of Subak to ensure that the water supply gets to everybody.
	Bali Society Balinese society is an intensely communal one; the organization of villages, the cultivation of farmlands and even the creative arts are communal efforts – a person belongs to their family, clan, caste and the village as a whole. Religion permeates all aspects of life so each stage of existence from soon after conception until after the final cremation is marked by ceremonies and ritual.....

Top Page I Home