The Balinese

Bali's magnificent beauty is overwhelmingly apparent. What too many tourists and prospective tourists miss is that the gorgeous beaches, rolling rice terraces and majestic volcanoes with their placid lakes are just the shell that contains the real magic of Bali.

The Balinese people are a puzzle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma. While the island has the magic off which they feed, the Balinese people have literally sculpted the entire island into a piece of art.

My (and some other people's) beloved rice terraces are unlike any others I've seen. The famous curved, tiered ones along many of Bali's hillsides and ravines are not the standard stacked rice terraces you see in many countries – but were created as curved, sensuous pieces of sculpture. Living, working sculpture.

It's no surprise that so many are on the edges of Ubud – the art and culture center of Bali. In and around Ubud there is traditional Balinese dance, wood carving, sculpture, stone carving, ceramic art, painting, fabric art, and music which literally reaches out to calm the air. At night the dance performances at the palace and lotus temple are backed by booming gamelan orchestras which send the sound of Bali echoing across the town and transport people to times before motorcycles, cars and tourists – times when art, rice, and spices filled the lives of the people of the Kingdom of Gianyar.

Until the Dutch finally crushed the Majhapit Dynasty in 1908, Bali had seven kings who for hundreds of years ruled in harmony, with understandings, consultation and connections. The king of Gianyar who sat in Ubud and ruled over the surrounding areas nurtured the arts. The lushness and fertility of his lands made his people prosperous and they had time to devote themselves to the causes of beauty and worship. The tradition remains today.

Most of Bali's tourism is in the southernmost areas of the island – Kuta, Jimbaran, Nusa Dua, Seminyak. The drier, breezier south with its long, beautiful white sand beaches and soaring cliffs around Ulu Watu makes for the perfect beach getaway. The incredible surf around Ulu Watu made Bali famous among surfers.

Always centered around fishing and trade, the people of the south had little problem making their money off foreigners. Over time, their landscape has changed dramatically – so much so that the gorgeous Nusa Dua white sand beach cove is now filled exclusively with resorts. The Bali of the south is a Bali made to spoon feed to tourists. Hints of culture and art decorating an international resort and vacation destination.

Outside of the tourist zone, and within the privacy of their villages and homes, the Balinese lead a different life. One dedicated to festivals, worship, music, art and culture. Every village has an elaborate week-long religious ceremony honoring Shiva each year. The villages stagger their timing so only a few have their big festival each month. But every month on full-moon, the Balinese disappear to their villages for the monthly full moon ceremony.

The roads fill with families dressed in white shirts, jackets, head dressings and colorful sarongs lined up, heading to their local temple. The women carry baskets of fruit on their head and little banana leaf dishes of fragrant plants, flowers and rice. They live as they always have, paying little attention to the tourists in cars driving by or the ATMs across the street.

In some of the small villages around Ubud – nothing at all has changed. Watching a ceremony procession in a village surrounded by rice fields and terraces feels like staring into history. A rich, colorful, history.

I have often imagined what the first Dutch explorers and traders who made contact with Bali must have thought. I once read that the Dutch had difficulty colonizing Bali not just because the Mahajapit kings fiercely resisted – especially the King of Singaraja in the north where the Dutch originally landed – but also because the sailors didn't have the heart.

When they stepped off their boats into this beautiful land with such a captivating, beautiful culture, it was hard to pick up a gun. It was also difficult to get back on their boats and many defected to life in Bali, marrying local women. While the Dutch gripped neighboring Java in a stronghold, they largely left little Bali alone. Because of its size, it had less to offer resource-wise. But there was an element of heart that made it difficult.

Perhaps back then things were a little more relaxed because foreign contacts were novel. Today, marrying a foreigner is not so admired. Balinese girls who take interest in foreign guys – let alone marry them – are usually labeled "bad girls". With an exact opposite attitude of Thais, Balinese do not believe in inter-marriage for financial advantage. Balinese fiercely guard the integrity of their culture and communities.

At first, it doesn't all make sense. The Balinese welcome foreigners to their island. They are fantastic with guests, enjoy knowing about the world and are amazingly open to new technologies and ideas. Their adaptive qualities are a major reason why they have such a successful tourist industry. After all, Bali is not the only stunningly gorgeous island in Indonesia.

At the same time, the Balinese prefer to live side by side with their foreign guests. They are fine with expat communities and welcome long-term tourists. They can respect each other and share a town like Ubud. Particularly in Ubud where the expat community tends to be deeply interested in Balinese art and culture, there's a happy synergy between the parties.

Balinese artists were heavily influenced by Dutch and other European artists who came to the island over the past century. Foreigners helped Balinese revive their dance and turn them into money-making productions that fuel an art that was beginning to wane at the turn of the 20th century.

All this is welcome, all of this is great so long as at the end of the day, or when ceremony calls, foreigners go home and let the villages and families be. There are boundaries. Their communities are not open to outsiders. You can see it in Balinese homes – walled compounds with intricate layouts involving multiple houses where couples usually have their own private space inside the family homestead. Together and separate.

In fact, Balinese homes practically say it all. When a family doesn't have much, they build simple structures. In the old days it was stone, wood and thatching. Now, they often use cheap cinder block and concrete to create a firm, permanent structure. As time progresses and money becomes available, Balinese families begin to piece by piece make their homes look like temples. The goal is to eventually have a home styled in the same red-orange brick facade, gold trim, wooden double-doors and red tiled or thatched roofs that characterize temples. Their home becomes their revered,  decorated, beautiful sanctuary.

Over time in this compound, I have watched as the owner has expanded the family temple in the corner of the property, made improvements, added tradition gazebos called bales, and turned the staff quarters into a traditional teak-wood bungalow-type house complete with a bale.

A balinese home is a sacred place.

The Balinese see a merger between beauty and the divine. In making the world more beautiful, they honor Shiva – the god most commonly worshipped here. The Balinese pay homage to the heavens – communally and individually. They make offerings. They pray multiple times a day in and around their homes.

They create art, costumes, music and even beautify their musical instruments all because beauty is part of the divine. They could easily be content with the beauty surrounding them – it's more than most people ever behold. Only the Balinese believe that through their personal pursuit and continuation of beauty – crafting, sculpting, painting, performing, singing, decorating – they worship, honor and move further toward oneness with the divine.

Through personal and communal cultivation, the Balinese powerfully reach for the heavens, pull them down to the ground and live within them. Perhaps this is why the sky here is enormous and without bound. In Bali, Heaven and Earth touch.

Sent from my iPad