This is a guest post by our Finnish intern Jenny Lohiniva
When rest of the world celebrates new year with a lot of partying and other festivities, the Balinese Hindu approach in comparison is very calm and interesting. The way people celebrate is a lot more down to earth, because people focus on meditation, self-reflection and different rituals, and majority are involved in the multiple days celebration.
On the first day I came across to the Melasti ceremony. I was at the beach in Sanur, when I noticed that something was going on. Hundreds of people dressed in the traditional balinese clothing with traditional music and an altar for different rituals. Afterwards, I learned the meaning of this ceremony is to purify individuals but also the universe, and this is why people bring symbols and objects to the water. Here I already noticed how many people participated and how important the new year celebration is for the Balinese people.
The next day was the Ogoh-Ogoh parade that was my personal favorite. I chose to see the parade in my neighborhood in Sanur. When the sun went down people slowly started gathering together, and in the end a huge crowd was anxiously waiting for the parade to start. As I was told beforehand, the parade includes huge statues that are are representing the bad spirits and even though they expertly crafted with skillful details, they are as well awefully ugly and scary. The evil spirits are scared away by making a lot of noise, and in the end some of the statues are burnt symbolizing getting rid of the bad spirits. This parade was truly mind-blowing – the statues were huge, and the creatures got crazier and uglier towards the end. It must have taken so much time and effort to build these creatures. I was very impressed and the spirit in the parade was great.
A young boy climbs on the Ogoh-Ogoh at Banjar Gelumpang
The day of silence, Nyepi, is a day that welcomes the new year and the Balinese people are meditating and fasting. Traditionally this day also includes restrictions that everyone in Bali are obliged to follow. The restrictions are; no fire or light, no work, no food, no sound. This means that you are not allowed to leave your house, and you should keep all noise to a minimum. The day is reserved for meditation and self-reflection.
For me, this day was bit of a challenge. I am not used to stay indoors for a whole day. To be honest I was even a bit nervous beforehand. What if I run out of food and get hungry? What if I am bored to death? I am not going to lie, there were moments when I was bored and would have loved to go outside to enjoy the sunny weather. I had beforehand decided that this was going to be my day of efficiency, getting a lot of things done because I was going to have to stay inside anyways. But after thinking about the reasons why this day is held, I decided to ditch my plans. For one day, I was going to do things that I wanted to do, not things that I should be doing. So I ended up sleeping late, practicing yoga, reading books, meditating, watching movies, and eating everything that I had in my fridge. For me the day was a success though maybe not in the most traditional way, but I got time to focus on my own wellbeing.
Overall the Balinese New Year was an amazing experience for me, and I feel that I got a bit closer to understanding Hinduism and the Balinese culture. I am very happy that I was here at this time, and I got even more fascinated and interested in the Balinese culture that has so many aspects to it.
