Thursday, December 15, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Cerita Cinta Mario Teguh
Detak jantung terus berlantun, langkah kaki tetap terpaduDalam lembaran penuh warna kehidupan angan yang terpendam kan terwujud
Cita-cita yang tinggi kan tergapai dengan usaha serta keriangan dan kesungguhan
Itulah arti dari mencintai diri sendiri
Jika kita mencintai seseorang, kita akan senantiasa mendoakannya
Walaupun dia tidak berada di sisi kita
Tuhan memberikan kita dua buah kaki untuk berjalan
Dua tangan untuk memegang
Dua telinga untuk mendengar
Dan dua mata untuk melihat
Tetapi mengapa Tuhan hanya menganugerahkan sekeping hati kepada kita?
Karena Tuhan telah memberikan sekeping hati lagi kepada seseorang untuk kita mencarinya
Itulah cinta…
Jangan sesekali mengucapkan selamat tinggal jika kita masih mau mencoba
Jangan sesekali menyerah jika kita masih merasa sanggup
Jangan sesekali mengatakan kita tidak mencintainya lagi jika kita masih tidak dapat melupakan
Cinta datang kepada orang yang masih mempunyai harapan
Walaupun mereka telah dikecewakan
Kepada mereka yang masih percaya
Walaupun mereka telah dikhianati
Kepada mereka yang masih ingin mencintai
Walaupun mereka telah disakiti sebelumnya dan
Kepada mereka yang mempunyai keberanian dan keyakinan untuk membangun kembali kepercayaan
Jangan sampai kita menyimpan kata-kata cinta kepada orang yang tersayang
Hingga dia meninggal dunia dan akhirnya kita terpaksa mencatat kata-kata cinta itu pada pusara
Sebaiknya ucapkanlah kata-kata cinta yang tersimpan di benak kita
Sekarang selagi ada hayatnya
Mungkin Tuhan menginginkan kita bertemu dan bercinta dengan orang yang salah
Sebelum bertemu dengan orang yang tepat
Kita harus mengerti bagaimana berterima kasih atas karunia tersebut
Cinta dapat mengubah pahit menjadi manis
Debu menjadi emas
Keruh menjadi bening
Sakit menjadi sembuh
Penjara menjadi telaga
Derita menjadi nikmat
Dan kemarahan menjadi rahmat
Sungguh menyakitkan mencintai seseorang yang tidak mencintai kita
Tetapi lebih menyakitkan adalah mencintai seseorang dan kita tidak pernah memiliki keberanian untuk menyatakan cinta itu kepadanya
Seandainya kita ingin mencintai atau memiliki hati seseorang
Ibarat kata seperti memetik sekuntum mawar merah
Kadangkala kita mencium harum mawar tersebut
Tetapi adakalanya kita merasakan disaat duri mawar itu menusuk jari
Hal yang menyedihkan dalam hidup
Adalah ketika kita bertemu seseorang yang sangat berarti bagi kita
Hanya untuk menemukan bahwa pada akhirnya menjadi tidak berarti
Dan kita harus membiarkannya pergi
Kadangkala kita tidak menghargai orang yang mencintai kita sepenuh hati
Sehingga kita kehilangannya
Pada saat itu tiada guna penyesalan karena perginya tanpa berkata lagi
Cintailah seseorang itu atas dasar “siapa dia sekarang”
Dan bukan “siapa dia sebelumnya”
Kisah silam tidak perlu diungkit lagi
Sekiranya kita benar-benar mencintainya setulus hati
Hati-hati dengan cinta
Karena cinta juga dapat membuat orang sehat menjadi sakit
Orang gemuk menjadi kurus
Orang normal menjadi gila
Orang kaya menjadi miskin
Raja menjadi budak
Jika cintanya itu disambut oleh para pecinta palsu
Kemungkinan apa yang kita sayangi atau cintai
Tersimpan keburukan didalamnya
Dan kemungkinan apa yang kita benci
Tersimpan kebaikan didalamnya
Cinta kepada harta artinya bakhil
Cinta kepada perempuan artinya alam
Cinta kepada diri sendiri artinya bijaksana
Cinta kepada mati artinya hidup
Dan cinta kepada Tuhan artinya takwa
Lemparkanlah seseorang yang bahagia dalam bercinta ke dalam laut
Pasti ia akan membawa seekor ikan
Lemparkanlah pula seorang yang gagal dalam bercinta ke dalam segudang roti
Pasti ia akan mati kelaparan
Seandainya kita dapat berbicara dalam semua bahasa manusia dan alam
Tetapi tidak mempunyai perasaan cinta dan kasih
Dirimu tak ubah seperti gong yang bergaung atau sekedar cangkang yang bergemerincing
Cinta adalah keabadian dan kenangan adalah hal yang terindah
Dalam cinta yang pernah dimiliki
Siapapun pandai menghayati cinta
Tapi tak seorangpun pandai menilai cinta
Karena cinta bukanlah sesuatu wujud yang bisa dilihat oleh kasat mata
Sebaliknya cinta hanya dapat dirasakan melalui hati dan perasaan
Cinta mampu melunakkan besi, menghancurkan batu, membangkitkan yang mati dan kehidupan padanya
Serta membuat budak menjadi pemimpin
Itulah dasarnya cinta…
Cinta sebenarnya adalah membiarkan orang yang kita cintai menjadi dirinya sendiri
Dan tidak merubahnya seperti gambaran yang kita inginkan
Jika tidak, kita hanya mencintai pantulan diri kita sendiri yang kita temukan dari dalam dirinya
Kita tidak akan pernah tahu bila kita akan jatuh cinta
Namun apabila sampai saatnya itu raihlah dengan kedua tanganmu
Dan jangan biarkan dia pergi dengan sejuta rasa tanda tanya dihatinya
Cinta bukanlah kata yang murah dan lumrah
Tetapi cinta adalah anugerah Tuhan yang indah dan suci jika manusia dapat melihat dan menilai kesucian
Bercinta memang mudah
Untuk dicintai juga memang mudah
Tapi untuk dicintai oleh orang yang kita cintai itulah yang sukar diperoleh
Jika saja kehadiran cinta sekedar untuk mengecewakan
Lebih baik cinta itu tak pernah hadir
Karena cinta sesuatu yang membawa keindahan dan kebahagiaan didalamnya
Cinta itu seperti kupu-kupu
Tambah dikejar tambah lari
Tapi kalau dibiarkan terbang dia akan datang disaat kita tidak mengharapkan
Cinta dapat membuatmu bahagia
Tapi sering juga menjadi sedih
Tapi cinta baru berharga kalau diberikan kepada seseorang yang menghargainya
Jadi janganlah terburu-buru dan pilih yang terbaik
Cinta bukan bagaimana menjadi pasangan yang sempurna bagi seseorang
Tapi bagaimana menemukan seseorang yang dapat membantu menjadi dirimu sendiri
Jangan pernah bilang “I Love You” kalau kita tidak pernah peduli
Jangan pernah membicarakan perasaan yang tidak pernah ada
Jangan pernah menyentuh hidup seseorang kalau hal itu untuk menghancurkan hatinya
Jangan pernah menatap matanya kalau semua yang dilakukan kita hanya untuk berbohong
Hal paling kejam yang seseorang lakukan kepada orang lain
Adalah membiarkannya jatuh cinta
Sementara kita tidak meneriab untuk menangkapnya
Cinta bukan “ini salah kamu” tapi “maafkan aku”
Bukan “kamu dimana sih” tapi “aku disini”
Bukan “gimana sih kamu” tapi “aku ngerti ko”
Bukan “coba kamu ngga kayak gini” tapi “aku cinta kamu seperti kamu apa adanya
Aktivitas yang paling benar bukan diukur berdasarkan berapa lama kita sudah bersama
Maupun berapa sering kita bersama
Tapi apakah selama kita bersama kita selalu saling mengisi satu sama lain dan saling membuat hidup yang berkualitas
Kesedihan dan kerinduan hanya terasa selama yang kita inginkan
Dan menyayat sedalam yang kita izinkan
Yang berat bukan bagaimana cara mengulangi kesedihan dan kerinduan itu
Tapi bagaimana cara belajar darinya
Cara jatuh cinta
Jatuh tapi jangan terhuyung-huyung
Konsisten tapi jangan memaksa
Berbagi dan jangan bersikap tidak adil
Mengerti dan cobalah untuk tidak banyak menuntut
Sedih tapi jangan pernah simpan kesedihan itu
Memang sakit melihat orang yang kita cintai sedang berbahagia dengan orang lain
Tapi lebih sakit lagi kalau orang yang kita cintai itu tidak berbahagia bersama kita
Cinta akan menyakitkan ketika kita berpisah dengan seseorang
Lebih menyakitkan apabila kita dilupakan oleh kekasih
Tapi cinta akan lebih menyakitkan lagi apabila seseorang yang kita sayangi tidak tahu apa yang sesungguhnya kita rasakan
Yang paling menyedihkan dalam hidup ini adalah menemukan seseorang dan jatuh cinta
Hanya untuk menemukan bahwa dia bukan untuk kita
Dan kita sudah menghabiskan waktu yang banyak untuk orang yang tidak pernah menghargainya
Kalau dia berkata “tidak”
Maka ia tidak akan pernah berkata “ya” setahun lagi ataupun 10 tahun lagi
Biarkan dia pergi…
Cinta adalah semangat
Cinta adalah kepercayaan
Cinta adalah energi yang tidak bisa dimusnahkan
Ia hanya bisa berubah bentuk
Cinta memang tak harus memiliki
Karena mencintai berarti memberi tak pernah kuminta..
Monday, October 10, 2011
BALI ISLAND
Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east. It is one of the country's 33 provinces with the provincial capital at Denpasar towards the south of the island (strictly speaking, the province covers a few small neighbouring islands as well as the isle of Bali).
With a population recorded as 3,891,000 in the 2010 Census, the island is home to most of Indonesia's small Hindu minority. In the 2000 census about 92.29% of Bali's population adhered to Balinese Hinduism while most of the remainder follow Islam. It is also the largest tourist destination in the country and is renowned for its highly developed arts, including traditional and modern dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking, and music. Bali, a tourist haven for decades, has seen a further surge in tourist numbers in recent years.
Bali was inhabited by about 2000 BC by Austronesian peoples who migrated originally from Taiwan through Maritime Southeast Asia. Culturally and linguistically, the Balinese are thus closely related to the peoples of the Indonesian archipelago, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Oceania. Stone tools dating from this time have been found near the village of Cekik in the island's west.
In ancient Bali, nine Hindu sects existed, namely Pasupata, Bhairawa, Siwa Shidanta, Waisnawa, Bodha, Brahma, Resi, Sora and Ganapatya. Each sect revered a specific deity as its personal Godhead.
Balinese culture was strongly influenced by Indian, Chinese, and particularly Hindu culture, beginning around the 1st century AD. The name Bali dwipa ("Bali island") has been discovered from various inscriptions, including the Blanjong pillar inscription written by Sri Kesari Warmadewa in 914 AD and mentioning "Walidwipa". It was during this time that the complex irrigation system subak was developed to grow rice. Some religious and cultural traditions still in existence today can be traced back to this period. The Hindu Majapahit Empire (1293–1520 AD) on eastern Java founded a Balinese colony in 1343. When the empire declined, there was an exodus of intellectuals, artists, priests, and musicians from Java to Bali in the 15th century.
The first European contact with Bali is thought to have been made in 1585 when a Portuguese ship foundered off the Bukit Peninsula and left a few Portuguese in the service of Dewa Agung. In 1597 the Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived at Bali and, with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602, the stage was set for colonial control two and a half centuries later when Dutch control expanded across the Indonesian archipelago throughout the second half of the nineteenth century (see Dutch East Indies). Dutch political and economic control over Bali began in the 1840s on the island's north coast, when the Dutch pitted various distrustful Balinese realms against each other. In the late 1890s, struggles between Balinese kingdoms in the island's south were exploited by the Dutch to increase their control.
The Dutch mounted large naval and ground assaults at the Sanur region in 1906 and were met by the thousands of members of the royal family and their followers who fought against the superior Dutch force in a suicidal puputan defensive assault rather than face the humiliation of surrender. Despite Dutch demands for surrender, an estimated 1,000 Balinese marched to their death against the invaders. In the Dutch intervention in Bali (1908), a similar massacre occurred in the face of a Dutch assault in Klungkung. Afterwards the Dutch governors were able to exercise administrative control over the island, but local control over religion and culture generally remained intact. Dutch rule over Bali came later and was never as well established as in other parts of Indonesia such as Java and Maluku.
In the 1930s, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and artists Miguel Covarrubias and Walter Spies, and musicologist Colin McPhee created a western image of Bali as "an enchanted land of aesthetes at peace with themselves and nature", and western tourism first developed on the island.
Imperial Japan occupied Bali during World War II. Bali Island was not originally a target in their Netherlands East Indies Campaign, but as the airfields on Borneo were inoperative due to heavy rains the Imperial Japanese Army decided to occupy Bali, which did not suffer from comperable weather. The island had no regular Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) troops. There was only a Native Auxiliary Corps Prajoda (Korps Prajoda) consisting of about 600 native soldiers and several Dutch KNIL officers under command of KNIL Lieutenant Colonel W.P. Roodenburg. On 19 February 1942 the Japanese forces landed near the town of Senoer. The island was quickly captured.
During the Japanese occupation a Balinese military officer, Gusti Ngurah Rai, formed a Balinese 'freedom army'. The lack of institutional changes from the time of Dutch rule however, and the harshness of war requisitions made Japanese rule little better than the Dutch one. Following Japan's Pacific surrender in August 1945, the Dutch promptly returned to Indonesia, including Bali, immediately to reinstate their pre-war colonial administration. This was resisted by the Balinese rebels now using Japanese weapons. On 20 November 1946, the Battle of Marga was fought in Tabanan in central Bali. Colonel I Gusti Ngurah Rai, by then 29 years old, finally rallied his forces in east Bali at Marga Rana, where they made a suicide attack on the heavily armed Dutch. The Balinese battalion was entirely wiped out, breaking the last thread of Balinese military resistance. In 1946 the Dutch constituted Bali as one of the 13 administrative districts of the newly proclaimed State of East Indonesia, a rival state to the Republic of Indonesia which was proclaimed and headed by Sukarno and Hatta. Bali was included in the "Republic of the United States of Indonesia" when the Netherlands recognised Indonesian independence on 29 December 1949.
The 1963 eruption of Mount Agung killed thousands, created economic havoc and forced many displaced Balinese to be transmigrated to other parts of Indonesia. Mirroring the widening of social divisions across Indonesia in the 1950s and early 1960s, Bali saw conflict between supporters of the traditional caste system, and those rejecting these traditional values. Politically, this was represented by opposing supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), with tensions and ill-feeling further increased by the PKI's land reform programs. An attempted coup in Jakarta was put down by forces led by General Suharto. The army became the dominant power as it instigated a violent anti-communist purge, in which the army blamed the PKI for the coup. Most estimates suggest that at least 500,000 people were killed across Indonesia, with an estimated 80,000 killed in Bali, equivalent to 5% of the island's population. With no Islamic forces involved as in Java and Sumatra, upper-caste PNI landlords led the extermination of PKI members.
As a result of the 1965/66 upheavals, Suharto was able to manoeuvre Sukarno out of the presidency, and his "New Order" government reestablished relations with western countries. The pre-War Bali as "paradise" was revived in a modern form, and the resulting large growth in tourism has led to a dramatic increase in Balinese standards of living and significant foreign exchange earned for the country. A bombing in 2002 by militant Islamists in the tourist area of Kuta killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. This attack, and another in 2005, severely affected tourism, bringing much economic hardship to the island, although tourist numbers have now returned to levels before the bombings.
Bali is renowned for its diverse and sophisticated art forms, such as painting, sculpture, woodcarving, handcrafts, and performing arts. Balinese percussion orchestra music, known as gamelan, is highly developed and varied. Balinese performing arts often portray stories from Hindu epics such as the Ramayana but with heavy Balinese influence. Famous Balinese dances include pendet, legong, baris, topeng, barong, gong keybar, and kecak (the monkey dance). Bali boasts one of the most diverse and innovative performing arts cultures in the world, with paid performances at thousands of temple festivals, private ceremonies, or public shows.
The Hindu New Year, Nyepi, is celebrated in the spring by a day of silence. On this day everyone stays at home and tourists are encouraged to remain in their hotels. But the day before that large, colourful sculptures of ogoh-ogoh monsters are paraded and finally burned in the evening to drive away evil spirits. Other festivals throughout the year are specified by the Balinese pawukon calendrical system.
Unlike most of Muslim-majority Indonesia, about 93.18% of Bali's population adheres to Balinese Hinduism, formed as a combination of existing local beliefs and Hindu influences from mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. Minority religions include Islam (4.79%), Christianity (1.38%), and Buddhism (0.64%). These figures do not include immigrants from other parts of Indonesia.
When Islam surpassed Hinduism in Java (16th century), Bali became a refuge for many Hindus. Balinese Hinduism is an amalgam in which gods and demigods are worshipped together with Buddhist heroes, the spirits of ancestors, indigenous agricultural deities and sacred places. Religion as it is practiced in Bali is a composite belief system that embraces not only theology, philosophy, and mythology, but ancestor worship, animism and magic. It pervades nearly every aspect of traditional life. Caste is observed, though less strictly than in India. With an estimated 20,000 puras (temples) and shrines, Bali is known as the "Island of a Thousand Puras", or "Island of the Gods".
Balinese Hinduism has roots in Indian Hinduism and in Buddhism, and adopted the animistic traditions of the indigenous people. This influence strengthened the belief that the gods and goddesses are present in all things. Every element of nature, therefore, possesses its own power, which reflects the power of the gods. A rock, tree, dagger, or woven cloth is a potential home for spirits whose energy can be directed for good or evil. Balinese Hinduism is deeply interwoven with art and ritual. Ritualizing states of self-control are a notable feature of religious expression among the people, who for this reason have become famous for their graceful and decorous behavior.
Apart from the majority of Balinese Hindus, there also exist Chinese immigrants whose traditions have melded with that of the locals. As a result, these Sino-Balinese not only embrace their original religion, which is a mixture of Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism and Confucianism, but also find a way to harmonize it with the local traditions. Hence, it is not uncommon to find local Sino-Balinese during the local temple's odalan. Moreover, Balinese Hindu priests are invited to perform rites alongside a Chinese priest in the event of the death of a Sino-Balinese. Nevertheless, the Sino-Balinese claim to embrace Buddhism for administrative purposes, such as their Identity Cards.
With a population recorded as 3,891,000 in the 2010 Census, the island is home to most of Indonesia's small Hindu minority. In the 2000 census about 92.29% of Bali's population adhered to Balinese Hinduism while most of the remainder follow Islam. It is also the largest tourist destination in the country and is renowned for its highly developed arts, including traditional and modern dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metalworking, and music. Bali, a tourist haven for decades, has seen a further surge in tourist numbers in recent years.
 | |||
| Bali |
In ancient Bali, nine Hindu sects existed, namely Pasupata, Bhairawa, Siwa Shidanta, Waisnawa, Bodha, Brahma, Resi, Sora and Ganapatya. Each sect revered a specific deity as its personal Godhead.
Balinese culture was strongly influenced by Indian, Chinese, and particularly Hindu culture, beginning around the 1st century AD. The name Bali dwipa ("Bali island") has been discovered from various inscriptions, including the Blanjong pillar inscription written by Sri Kesari Warmadewa in 914 AD and mentioning "Walidwipa". It was during this time that the complex irrigation system subak was developed to grow rice. Some religious and cultural traditions still in existence today can be traced back to this period. The Hindu Majapahit Empire (1293–1520 AD) on eastern Java founded a Balinese colony in 1343. When the empire declined, there was an exodus of intellectuals, artists, priests, and musicians from Java to Bali in the 15th century.
The first European contact with Bali is thought to have been made in 1585 when a Portuguese ship foundered off the Bukit Peninsula and left a few Portuguese in the service of Dewa Agung. In 1597 the Dutch explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived at Bali and, with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602, the stage was set for colonial control two and a half centuries later when Dutch control expanded across the Indonesian archipelago throughout the second half of the nineteenth century (see Dutch East Indies). Dutch political and economic control over Bali began in the 1840s on the island's north coast, when the Dutch pitted various distrustful Balinese realms against each other. In the late 1890s, struggles between Balinese kingdoms in the island's south were exploited by the Dutch to increase their control.
The Dutch mounted large naval and ground assaults at the Sanur region in 1906 and were met by the thousands of members of the royal family and their followers who fought against the superior Dutch force in a suicidal puputan defensive assault rather than face the humiliation of surrender. Despite Dutch demands for surrender, an estimated 1,000 Balinese marched to their death against the invaders. In the Dutch intervention in Bali (1908), a similar massacre occurred in the face of a Dutch assault in Klungkung. Afterwards the Dutch governors were able to exercise administrative control over the island, but local control over religion and culture generally remained intact. Dutch rule over Bali came later and was never as well established as in other parts of Indonesia such as Java and Maluku.
In the 1930s, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and artists Miguel Covarrubias and Walter Spies, and musicologist Colin McPhee created a western image of Bali as "an enchanted land of aesthetes at peace with themselves and nature", and western tourism first developed on the island.
Imperial Japan occupied Bali during World War II. Bali Island was not originally a target in their Netherlands East Indies Campaign, but as the airfields on Borneo were inoperative due to heavy rains the Imperial Japanese Army decided to occupy Bali, which did not suffer from comperable weather. The island had no regular Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) troops. There was only a Native Auxiliary Corps Prajoda (Korps Prajoda) consisting of about 600 native soldiers and several Dutch KNIL officers under command of KNIL Lieutenant Colonel W.P. Roodenburg. On 19 February 1942 the Japanese forces landed near the town of Senoer. The island was quickly captured.
During the Japanese occupation a Balinese military officer, Gusti Ngurah Rai, formed a Balinese 'freedom army'. The lack of institutional changes from the time of Dutch rule however, and the harshness of war requisitions made Japanese rule little better than the Dutch one. Following Japan's Pacific surrender in August 1945, the Dutch promptly returned to Indonesia, including Bali, immediately to reinstate their pre-war colonial administration. This was resisted by the Balinese rebels now using Japanese weapons. On 20 November 1946, the Battle of Marga was fought in Tabanan in central Bali. Colonel I Gusti Ngurah Rai, by then 29 years old, finally rallied his forces in east Bali at Marga Rana, where they made a suicide attack on the heavily armed Dutch. The Balinese battalion was entirely wiped out, breaking the last thread of Balinese military resistance. In 1946 the Dutch constituted Bali as one of the 13 administrative districts of the newly proclaimed State of East Indonesia, a rival state to the Republic of Indonesia which was proclaimed and headed by Sukarno and Hatta. Bali was included in the "Republic of the United States of Indonesia" when the Netherlands recognised Indonesian independence on 29 December 1949.
The 1963 eruption of Mount Agung killed thousands, created economic havoc and forced many displaced Balinese to be transmigrated to other parts of Indonesia. Mirroring the widening of social divisions across Indonesia in the 1950s and early 1960s, Bali saw conflict between supporters of the traditional caste system, and those rejecting these traditional values. Politically, this was represented by opposing supporters of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI), with tensions and ill-feeling further increased by the PKI's land reform programs. An attempted coup in Jakarta was put down by forces led by General Suharto. The army became the dominant power as it instigated a violent anti-communist purge, in which the army blamed the PKI for the coup. Most estimates suggest that at least 500,000 people were killed across Indonesia, with an estimated 80,000 killed in Bali, equivalent to 5% of the island's population. With no Islamic forces involved as in Java and Sumatra, upper-caste PNI landlords led the extermination of PKI members.
As a result of the 1965/66 upheavals, Suharto was able to manoeuvre Sukarno out of the presidency, and his "New Order" government reestablished relations with western countries. The pre-War Bali as "paradise" was revived in a modern form, and the resulting large growth in tourism has led to a dramatic increase in Balinese standards of living and significant foreign exchange earned for the country. A bombing in 2002 by militant Islamists in the tourist area of Kuta killed 202 people, mostly foreigners. This attack, and another in 2005, severely affected tourism, bringing much economic hardship to the island, although tourist numbers have now returned to levels before the bombings.
Bali is renowned for its diverse and sophisticated art forms, such as painting, sculpture, woodcarving, handcrafts, and performing arts. Balinese percussion orchestra music, known as gamelan, is highly developed and varied. Balinese performing arts often portray stories from Hindu epics such as the Ramayana but with heavy Balinese influence. Famous Balinese dances include pendet, legong, baris, topeng, barong, gong keybar, and kecak (the monkey dance). Bali boasts one of the most diverse and innovative performing arts cultures in the world, with paid performances at thousands of temple festivals, private ceremonies, or public shows.
The Hindu New Year, Nyepi, is celebrated in the spring by a day of silence. On this day everyone stays at home and tourists are encouraged to remain in their hotels. But the day before that large, colourful sculptures of ogoh-ogoh monsters are paraded and finally burned in the evening to drive away evil spirits. Other festivals throughout the year are specified by the Balinese pawukon calendrical system.
 |
| Stone Carving in Ubud |
Unlike most of Muslim-majority Indonesia, about 93.18% of Bali's population adheres to Balinese Hinduism, formed as a combination of existing local beliefs and Hindu influences from mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. Minority religions include Islam (4.79%), Christianity (1.38%), and Buddhism (0.64%). These figures do not include immigrants from other parts of Indonesia.
When Islam surpassed Hinduism in Java (16th century), Bali became a refuge for many Hindus. Balinese Hinduism is an amalgam in which gods and demigods are worshipped together with Buddhist heroes, the spirits of ancestors, indigenous agricultural deities and sacred places. Religion as it is practiced in Bali is a composite belief system that embraces not only theology, philosophy, and mythology, but ancestor worship, animism and magic. It pervades nearly every aspect of traditional life. Caste is observed, though less strictly than in India. With an estimated 20,000 puras (temples) and shrines, Bali is known as the "Island of a Thousand Puras", or "Island of the Gods".
Balinese Hinduism has roots in Indian Hinduism and in Buddhism, and adopted the animistic traditions of the indigenous people. This influence strengthened the belief that the gods and goddesses are present in all things. Every element of nature, therefore, possesses its own power, which reflects the power of the gods. A rock, tree, dagger, or woven cloth is a potential home for spirits whose energy can be directed for good or evil. Balinese Hinduism is deeply interwoven with art and ritual. Ritualizing states of self-control are a notable feature of religious expression among the people, who for this reason have become famous for their graceful and decorous behavior.
Apart from the majority of Balinese Hindus, there also exist Chinese immigrants whose traditions have melded with that of the locals. As a result, these Sino-Balinese not only embrace their original religion, which is a mixture of Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism and Confucianism, but also find a way to harmonize it with the local traditions. Hence, it is not uncommon to find local Sino-Balinese during the local temple's odalan. Moreover, Balinese Hindu priests are invited to perform rites alongside a Chinese priest in the event of the death of a Sino-Balinese. Nevertheless, the Sino-Balinese claim to embrace Buddhism for administrative purposes, such as their Identity Cards.
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