The Wisdom of Bali

I know it’s confusing with all the people with the same name, but here’s the deal: all children in Bali are named according to their birth order. If you are the first child, your name is Wayan, second is Made (Ma-day), the third is Nyoman and fourth is Ketut. If you have more than four children, you start the names again.  It’s a great system really.

I had a wonderful talk with Wayan this morning. He is a man of 29 years, has a lovely wife and 2 sons and is very knowing and wise. We were talking about how Ubud used to be a sweet little village and now with tourism, things have changed dramatically. People feel that they need to sell their rice farms in order to build hotels or villas or to start a business to cater to tourists. We talked about money and how, many times it makes people greedy and changes their lives. People accumulate more things with their money and then have more worries about taking care of the things, making payments, worrying if people will steal them from you.

We talked about how important it is to give as well as receive and how essential that is in the whole scheme of things. He said it’s like a swimming pool. If it gets filled up and there is no outlet, the water gets stagnant and poisoned. You have to have an outpouring or a stream so that fresh water can come in to keep everything balanced and for the cycle to continue in a healthy way.

It’s the same reason that people in Bali make offerings to the gods several times a day. You must give in order to receive. You buy the flowers, rice, candies and banana leaves  to support and give to the people who sell them, you make the beautiful little baskets and offer them to the gods at the temple in order to receive their blessings. 

In Bali, family and temple ceremonies are the most important things and are what all life revolves around. If there is a ceremony taking place, nothing else matters. Businesses close and streets are clogged.  And this happens quite often.

The family lives together in their compound for their whole lives. When a son gets married, his wife comes to live in the compound. More rooms are added as needed. Compounds can be quite large, but there is usually one communal cooking area, and of course the family temple is central to life there. Children are taken care of by the whole family. As they say, “it takes a village”.

It’s all very beautiful and makes perfect sense to me. I am learning a great deal from the wisdom of Bali.