Thoughts From Bali: Offerings and Human Responsibility

The cosmic weight of human choice.

What are you doing to promote peace and harmony in the world? To calm the storms of chaos?

Here in Bali, one is constantly reminded of the role humanity plays on a cosmic scale.

In Balinese Hinduism, we are here to keep a balance between the forces of Order (Dharma) and Chaos (adharma).

Caru offerings like these worn plants, the wilted flowers, and rotting eggs are offerings to the latter, the agents of Chaos, the bhutas and kalas, the demons.

These aren’t sacrifices to honor or worship. These are offering to placate. Demons aren’t so much evil in the Bali Hindu tradition as much as they are forces that cause disharmony and chaos in the world.

In tight-knit communities that have to work together to bring in the harvest and who live in villages where you know everyone, disharmony is one of the worst things around.

This personal experience is believed to reflect out onto all of existence. For existence, itself to be maintained order must be maintained.

The demons are seen as constantly hungry. Hungry for anything really and so their offerings are simple. Rotting food, eggs, flowers, sometimes old and wilted. These are made to satisfy the appetites of the demons, Chaos itself, so that it calms, grows sluggish.

The offerings to the gods, the agents of Order and Dharma, these are always far more beautiful. The best flowers, dyed rice cookies, fresh fruit, rare meats, candies, and beautiful things.

As a Balinese friend told us “we make things beautiful so that it is a pleasure to pray.”

The greater the beauty, the purity of a thing, the more fitting it is for the gods, the agents of Oder and Dharma.

Every day the Balinese make these offerings. Acknowledging their dependence on harmony, peace, and order and recognizing the dangers in the world when chaos and disharmony is allowed to spread.

This practice isn’t unique to Bali, it was practiced in ancient China with the Dao, in Egypt with Ma’at, in Greece with Thetis, and in cultures all around the world.

Daily rituals, practices, and the very fabric of society reinforced the importance of harmony and one’s spiritual responsibility to promote it in the world.

Further, this practice is carried into every aspect of life. From the spiritual world into the social and even the political.

Today while talking to a Balinese friend I asked her how she felt about her country’s politics. She was enthusiastic about her president but said that many politicians are corrupt.

“I don’t like politics, there is much adharma there. I wish I didn’t have to deal with it, but if you ignore adharma, it grows. So you have to pay attention. You have to support good dharma.”

In our modern rush, devoid of a consciously constructed culture, empty of powerful rituals and symbols it seems to me as if we have lost sight of our human responsibility.

We are the agents of balance in this world. We choose day by day, act by act to promote harmony or disorder and chaos.

How can you remind yourself daily of your cosmic calling to bring harmony? To put angst, chaos, anxiety, and rage to rest?

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