as we headed off to the east coast yesterday which is a 2 hour drive, we found ourselves in several traffic jams....which we quickly interpreted to mean that there must be a funeral ceremony going on....so all the traffic stops as all the villagers walk 4 abreast, women in the front, men following, and with the pall bearers leading with either a the coffin with a big "decorated float" on top of it and with another person in the lead holding a framed photograph of the deceased...not necessarily recent, but from their youth! (will have to check that out...how they all have a serious portrait photo of them looking well...maybe their i.d. card photo?)
so traffic is stopped by one of them in order to either go from the persons house, where the gamelon band of men has been sitting outside for a week playing special music that sounds heavenly in order to aid the soul to rise to join their deceased ancestors (poorer families use a recorded tape of the music which is played from dawn to dusk the entire time until the body is buried) to either the temple and then cemetery, or crematory, women are holding offerings, a man, bamboo for making a fire, the priest is on the megaphone from the temple reciting prayers and mantras informing the ancestors that someone is joining them soon, and also encouraging the villagers to help the soul rise....no dragging them down here to earth with crying and sadness...
yesterday it happened 3 times, causing our trip to take a little longer, but allowing us to witness much of the different parts of the ritual....including the big paper flower pagents (is that the word?!) decorating the entrance to the deceased house, the gamelon bank playing high tones including some bamboo flutes...a huge gold plated float for a wealthy woman,, and sadly seeing a man in the lead of the last procession holding a small bundle of batk material in his arms,,,with the dead baby inside. ( which touched home having been part of a similar funeral procession for an infant from yodfat once....may she rest in peace)
dewah explained that there are 4 parts to a funeral that are necessary in order for it to be complete: gamelon, song, offerings and prayer....if one is missing, then the funeral is not complete....
and only when the family has enough money can the body be removed from the cemetary (sometimes only symbolically, sometimes the actaul bones) and cremated and then the urn with the ashes is taken all over bali in the "journey of the soul" going to all the directions and all of the different regions (mountainous, valleys, seaside with temple ceremonies and finally ending up at the higherst temple physically and geographically, in bali, and from their the assurance that the soul will not have to be reincarnated again in this world...
all of this is the responsibility of the children towards their parents, the debt they owe to them and for this all their money is saved, in order to insure the huge costs of the burial ritual....so....no one is too busy thinking about going abroad here....too much money is needed just in order to save up for your parents burial....
when i asked him if a lot of balinese people die of cancer,,,he said, " 1 in 1000"..i was so surprised at the fact....with one out of every 8 women in the west will have cancer....how in bali is it so low? and he said that he believes that the lifestyle of fresh food and fruits daily, with no MSG and buying and cooking each day just the quantity for that same day, no fridges and freezers and canned goods etc...probably helped keep everyone healthy...and so many just died at 80 of old age ....but that now that the west has influenced here too and everyone is into progress....cancer will also probably grow along with everything else.
No comments:
Post a Comment