Bali's Beautiful Offerings

Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Indonesia is a vast archipelago of 17,508 islands. Within this mostly Muslim country--it has the world's largest Muslim population--sits the island of Bali, the only Hindu-majority population in Southeast Asia. Ninety percent of the 4.5 million people in Bali are Hindu. 

For the past seventy-five years, Bali has also been a prime tourist destination of Asia. And it was less than three hours by plane from Manila, so it was our first stop on our Southeast Asia tour. 

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In our ten days in Bali, we stayed on the tourist path, dividing our time between the artistic and cultural capital Ubud, the beach (along with a lot of Australians), and a mountain village retreat.

Most visitors to Bali are struck immediately by the abundance of displays of Balinese Hinduism: the statues to Hindu deities and the many offerings or banten placed on the ground in driveways and sidewalks and upon altars outside homes and temples and stores. The trays, constructed of coconut and banana leaves, are filled with flowers, incense, rice, and other sweets. 

One of the first times we encountered these banten was on the sidewalk outside a restaurant entrance. To show our respect for the Balinese, we were careful to not step on the colorful trays.

Later, we realized that the banten placed on the ground were for the demons and negative forces, or bhutas and kalas. The offerings are often made of old or decaying things in the expectations that the demons are greedy and will consume anything. And stepping on them is not really a big deal.

Though this mass of leaves and flowers looks like it may be ready for garbage pick-up, in fact its been put there as an offering to the kalas outside of a temple.

When I snorkeled near Lembongan Island, before I jumped in the water, I noticed flowers floating on the surface. These, I realized, were offerings scattered by my boat pilot to the bhutas and kalas to placate them and protect us from harm.

Offerings to the Gods are everywhere in Bali and one of the visible signs or sekala of Balinese Hindu daily religious practice. 

Offerings to the higher aspects of Gods, “those manifestations that the Balinese called betara-betara,” are more beautiful and made of things to delight the senses of the Gods. Traditionally, these offerings are made of fresh flowers, betel leaves, palm leaf weavings, coconut shavings, and cooked rice or cookies, though we also saw Mentos and cellophane wrapped cookies in banten trays.  These offerings sit outside stores, on bridges, on car hoods and motorcycle handlebars.

Sometimes I wondered, too, if the offerings were a way of feeding hungry birds. (Surely this is considered auspicious.)

The fact that both the positive and negative spiritual forces are given offerings reveals a central philosophy of Balinese Hinduism: human existence must seek to find a balance between the good and evil in the world. As Fred B. Eiseman Jr. in his book Bali: Sekala and Niskala explains, Hinduism goes beyond the western dualities of good and evil. Balinese Hinduism “includes what can be considered a third position, ‘center,’ which balances the other two.”

Balinese Hinduism, which differs significantly from Hinduism in India and Nepal, has roots and even religious practices from the animist beliefs of indigenous ancestors of Java and Bali, and in Buddhism, which spread through much of Southeast Asia in the 8th century. 

When the independent Indonesian state was established in the last half of the 20th century, laws protected the freedom of religious practices, but the state only acknowledged monotheistic religions. In the 1960s, the Bali Hindu Council got around this monotheistic requirement by emphasizing the supreme diety, Sanghyang Widi Wasa who manifests himself as the Hindu holy trinity or trimurthi: Brahma (the creator), Wisnu (the preserver, the God who Indian Hindus call Vishnu), and Siwa (the dissolver of life, the God who Indian Hindus call Siva or Shiva).  

There are, as is the nature of Hinduism, many other minor Gods and Goddesses in the Balinese pantheon. For example, Brahma’s consort is Saraswati, the Goddess of learning and she is often depicted in statues and paintings riding a goose.

Almost every house or shop or restaurant has a small altar in the entryway. And there are temples everywhere. According to Rough Guide there are over twenty thousand temples in Bali, which is impressive for an island less than a hundred miles across. 

In the city of Ubud, a visitor is struck by the surrounding beauty and artistry of everything from the buildings’ architecture of red brick and black stone carved portals to the prevalence of arts and handicrafts. Though it might be easy to romanticize the beauty or even wonder if it’s a bit of intentional show for the tourists in a place like Ubud, it seemed as though most Balinese had mastered the practice of living intentionally with balance.

Travelers can go to Ubud to admire the ingenuity of the irrigated rice terraces, trek to the natural splendor of the neighboring volcano, or search for one’s own personal spiritual balance. 

Joseph and I discovered the beauty of Bali in its art: paintings from the past few hundred years range from intricate pictorial images of the Balinese Hindu calendar to the contemporary representations of modern Bali where locals are doing laundry in a river surrounded by bicycle-riding and picture-snapping tourists.

Museums with sizable collections are across the street from small fine art galleries, which are next to compounds where artists paint traditional scenes in popular styles over and over to sell to tourists. The art of Bali, like the banten offerings, delight the senses. One guide at a small museum told me that in Balinese, there is no word for art or artist, rather paintings are just part of one’s beautiful offerings to the Gods.