in harmony with nature

 this week i traveled to a different village for a "forty two day baby ceremony". from the time the mother gives birth, until the 42nd day, she is not allowed to participate in any praying or making of offerings since she is considered impure after birth. now after 42 days she purified and is allowed to leave the house, and get back into society and temple life. also the baby is now allowed to go out of the house.

each village has its' own traditions even though they are all Hindus. in this village they celebrate the 42nd day with the slaughtering of a suckling pig, many offerings and a priest that conducts the hour long ceremony at the house. my friends grandfather had three wives (at the same time), and some 9 children from them.  the third grandmother is relatively younger and had offered to prepare all of the offerings for her step great granddaughter. during the ceremony, which is mainly the priest blessing the offerings while reciting mantras and sprinkling holy water on them and ringing his bell. different offerings are placed in different places. at one point they asked this third grandmother to hold the baby while the mother was being anointed. i laughed when i saw this because the day before they had gone to a clairvoyant that told them that the soul of the first grandmother is in the baby. so here we had grandma number three holding the baby who is actually grandma number ones soul! who would dream up a scenario like that when he took his third wife, who had been the servant to his first wife! i love it.

anyways, back to the ceremony. one of the offerings was an old metal rice cooking pot with a piece of dried leaf that had a mantra written on it in special white paste symbolizing brahma, the creator. on this was a new set of baby clothes, and other offerings. these were carried by a procession of women down to the banks of the nearby river. they were placed there with blessings that the baby be blessed to be in harmony with nature. they were left there, to the elements. in the village i live in they even take the baby at 6 months to the river and dip them into it to symbolize the oneness with nature, in the flow of the river. 

after my friend explained this idea to me, i began to see the connection with the inexplicable feeling i have here in bali. it doesn't matter whether it is riding for hours through the countryside on the back of a motorbike, or walking down a winding dirt path every morning to the sea, or seeing the little grass huts in the rice fields, or the offerings of ceremonies that have been washed ashore. there is always something that touches my heart deeply that i can't understand.

with this new information about this ceremony for the newborn, i realized how important being in harmony with nature is to the balinese. and that that is one of the secrets to the beauty here. when i walk down a stone path to a family compound, it sits in nature, at one with it, as if it grew there. when i see the people at work with their knives cutting leaves for their livestock, making a boat, preparing offerings, collecting fruits from the trees; it is all done effortlessly and peacefully in a kind of flow with nature. time after time i am faced with suddenly observing how my actions to grate, cut, carry or grind something use much effort, while they sit there looking as if they are not even doing anything. their use of their body, placing the offerings on their heads, or carrying things on their shoulders, their squatting or sitting on the earth for prayer in the temple courtyard surrounded by nature, all seems to be a part of this intention of theirs to be in harmony with nature. 

i have been studying Kabbalah for about 8-9 years now and the hebrew word "sviva", ("surroundings") is used in order to describe how we must be in harmony with our surroundings, we must annul ourselves to our surroundings, we must see the greatness of our surroundings and learn from them. and suddenly yesterday, while i was reading these words from the kabbalah lesson, i wondered if it is not exactly what the balinese are doing here. the intention in the studies is the people that are considered the "surroundings", the group of people studying kabbalah that all have the same goal and intention. they are the "sviva" that we look up to and try and emulate. and i wondered if the balinese do this, and succeed in being a very united and spiritual and relatively ego-less society because they have discovered the secret of living in harmony with Nature, and make it a priority in life.