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Balinese Cultur1

Balinese culture is characterized by a unique blend of spirituality, religion, tradition, and art. Religion is considered an art form that is practiced from a young age, as skills and images are passed down through generations. Artistic expressions like paintings, carvings, weaving, and rice decorations are used in religious homage and found throughout temples, fields, and homes. Balinese culture also emphasizes concepts of time, place, and situation to blend traditional thinking with modern influences. Temple festivals, rituals, and celebrations marking life events are deeply important to Balinese religion and occur frequently throughout the year.

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220 views2 pages

Balinese Cultur1

Balinese culture is characterized by a unique blend of spirituality, religion, tradition, and art. Religion is considered an art form that is practiced from a young age, as skills and images are passed down through generations. Artistic expressions like paintings, carvings, weaving, and rice decorations are used in religious homage and found throughout temples, fields, and homes. Balinese culture also emphasizes concepts of time, place, and situation to blend traditional thinking with modern influences. Temple festivals, rituals, and celebrations marking life events are deeply important to Balinese religion and occur frequently throughout the year.

Uploaded by

Pardak Ardana
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Balinese Culture

Balinese culture is a unique combination of spirituality, religion, tradition and art.


Religion is considered to be art and it seems that almost every Balinese is a devoted artist,
spending 'free time' applying skills and images which have been passed down from generation to
generation and grasped from a very young age. Expressed through beautiful and intricate
paintings, extraordinary carvings, superb weaving, and even in rice decorations that cover the
myriad shrines found in public areas, in paddy fields or in homes, the island is alive with art and
religious homage.
Balinese culture is a complex event characterized by diversity and adaptability. A
central dictum in Balinese thinking is the concept of Desa - Kala - Patra, (time, place and
situation), a dynamic notion holding that traditional thinking will blend in harmony with the new.
The Balinese distinguish between Sekala, the material, and Niskala the eternal. Reality is a
coincidence of the material and the eternal realms. One does not exist without the other. The
world, therefore, is the product of the interaction of Sekala and Niskala.
Temple festivals are commonplace. Each village will hold some sort of colourful
ceremony for each one of its own temples a couple of times a year. Add to this the rituals and
celebrations for each persons' passage from birth, puberty, marriage, childbirth to death and the
after-world, and include the major island-wide celebrations like Galungan, Kuningan and
Nyepi; the day of silence when the whole island closes down in fear of evil spirits flying in from
the sea, and you can begin to understand how important religion in Bali.
Art, culture and day to day activities for most Balinese are strongly bonded to a unique
form of Hinduism called Hindu Dharma, which is widely thought to be the closest example to
the religion and social framework that existed in Java during the zenith of its power and is now
found nowhere else. Classical dance dramas based on the old Hindu epics of the Ramayana and
the Mahabarata which arrived from Java, are like everywhere else in Indonesia, mixed with
pre-Hindu animist belief and peculiar local folklore. Not all Balinese adopted the new Hindu
religion though. The Bali Aga who now live in isolated groups in the mountains at Trunyan and

Tenganan, for example, preferred their ancient animist beliefs, which are still practiced and
remain largely intact today.

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