Island of Compassion

When Professor Karen Armstrong (one of the spiritual giants of our time) visited Indonesia in early June 2013, she looks obviously impressed with the story of Bali as an island of compassion.  One day after the author of the book “Twelve Steps to Compassionate Life” heard this story, in front of so many participants in Jakarta she openly told that she could not sleep after hearing this story. Even after her return to England she was still taking the time to send an e-mail message that contains approximately like this: “I was so moved by your speech … let us keep in touch about making Bali an island of compassion”.

Loving Flower to Terrorists

The cosmic message of Bali bombing is clear. It happened exactly one digit after the terrorist attacks in the United States. To put it more precisely, in the U.S. it occurred in september 11th 2011 and in Bali it happened in october 12th 2002. From the date of eleven to the date of twelve,  from month of september to month of october, from the year of 2001 to the year of 2002. And when the terrorist attacked New York City it was followed by a counterattack of countless bullets that costing a lot of lifes, in Bali there was not even  a single small stone was thrown into the holy place  of non Balinese. The most touching thing, the person who received many international medals because of saving a lot of lifes after the bombing was a muslim leader  Mr. Haji Bambang.

Elsewhere, all the terrorist bombings were followed by the fire of anger and revenge. But in Bali, as the story above, terrorists were even given “loving flower”. After learning from this event, in the depths of meditation ever heard: “samsara is at the head, nirvana is in the heart”. And the depth of compassion will determine where a person will go. It’s not coincidence that the beginning part of the word compassion is “compass”, the middle part is “pass”. This is the compass of the path. One who follows the path by using compassion as the compass, one day he/she will pass.

Rituals of Love

One thing that unique in Bali, there are rituals everywhere. More surprisingly, the ceremony is not devoted to the upper realms such as gods, goddesses, God, Buddha only, but also to feed the lower realm like satan. In almost every house there is penunggun karang, the kind of home for the spirits that has lived there first. By feeding the lower creatures, this does not mean that the Balinese worship the devil, once again not!. It is the honest mirror of  perfect compassion. When we can feed the devil, it is easier to provide offerings to God. If one can give space for the creatures of the dark, it is easy to provide room for the creatures of the light.

Cycle of time in Bali is divided into time of going up (worshiping the upper realm), and the time that goes down (feeding the lower realm). There are holy days to say thank you to the trees, animals, goods. And of course there are the holy days of worshiping the upper realm. In the contemporary language, Balinese ceremony is love ceremony. A series of  love rituals that is intended to make all sentient beings happy and free from suffering.

And this type of rituals is not only a monopoly of Bali. In southern France and northern Spain, archaeologists found the caves millions of years old. On the walls of the cave there are very long reliefs carved in the rock, telling the love of people to animals because animals were the main source of food at that time. The similar thing happen to Tibet, one part of Tibetan ceremony also feed the lower creatures. Merge into one, from long long time ago human heart is longing for compassion.

Compassionate Beings

Illuminated by the story of love ceremony, it is clear that human being is actually a compassionate being. People were born here on this planet to bless this planet with love, kindness, compassion. And this planet is blessed when human being reinventing the authentic and holistic Self. That’s why, the Balinese elder called human being  as “dewa ya kala ya“. Inside human being there is God and the devil as well. However, the devil is not the enemy of God. Both are part of what the psychologist Carl G. Jung called as authentic Self.

In the early stage, religions called anger, revenge, envy as representative of darkness. Religions also called kindness, love, compassion as the representative of light. But without the darkness, the light loses its meaning. Health and whole were reinvented when human embrace all dualities (including the duality of God-satan) with the same quality of smile. Meditation is very helpful in this regard as the most important task of meditation is to be a compassionate witness.

But this is far from easy. In the language of Carl G. Jung: “The most terrifying thing in life is accepting oneself completely”. Particularly it is really hard to the unauthentic beings to accept shortages, bad luck, imperfections. That’s why in another part of Jung’s work he wrote: “People will do everything to avoid the Soul”. Human being will do anything to get away from the Soul, because for people who do not complete and authentic yet the encounter with the Spirit is very scary.

To help people meeting the Soul peacefully, in Bali God was named Embang. In the absolute terms, Embang is very close to wisdom, emptiness, silence. That’s why Bali is the only island in the world that celebrate the new year with silence day. Since emptiness provides space to grow without any discrimination, the relative aspect of Embang (God) is perfect compassion. This is reflected in the sincerity to feed the lower realms, as well as providing shelter for them. And this finding is supported by the cosmic messages in the form of famous film/ book “Eat, Pray, Love”. According to the latest famous work, nice food was available in Italy, beautiful prayers were  heard in India, and touching love is found in Bali. Great poet Rabin Dranath Tagore went to Bali once, and called Bali as “Morning of the World”.

Hearing a presentation like this, through facial expressions, body language, the email that was sent – even promised to tell this story to the people of United States – it was obvious that Professor Karen Armstrong is very impressive when  she heard this conclusion: “Not only Seattle worth mentioning the city of compassion, it is also worth mentioning Bali as an island of compassion”.