I Wrestle with Demons in Bali

I became disappointed with Bali the minute I stepped off the plane and into its bright sunlight when one of my demons, (I never leave home without one. 🙂 ), whispered in my ear, ” Something smells bad here.” That smell was acrid smoke. I encountered it everywhere I went in Bali. Heavy clouds of it sat around every corner in the cities, and even when traveling high into  Bali’s breezy mountains I could still perceive whiffs of it  drifting in from God knows where. I don’t like smoke. I don’t smoke cigarettes or anything else and connect  smoke with being unclean and unworthy. I had read prior to my trip that Bali was a locus of fresh art and sincere spirituality, and expected everyday life in Bali to be a cocktail of perception, beauty, and godliness. I was immediately disappointed by the clinging smoke that seasoned my every experience. I later learned that Bali’s ubiquitous smoke wasn’t generated by vehicular traffic or industrial excretions. The Balinese were not sloppy or negligent in their burnings. Instead the smoke  arose because Bali is an island with little room for garbage dumps, and has been intentionally burning its waste for centuries. Burning was also an important part of  long standing religious traditions. During the elaborate Balinese funeral process, the deceased is placed in a wooden box built in the shape of an animal and both are burnt. The resulting ashes are cast into the sea as a symbol of the dead person’s soul being released to the gods. Finally, each morning the Balinese leave little offerings to the gods on their front walkways or sometimes on the street in front of their houses. The offering may consist of a lump of rice, fruit, or flowers on a leaf. This offering is often accompanied by a stick of smoking incense. These tiny but smokey rituals are reinforced by clouds of incense floating out of Bali’s thousands of temples. The resulting smell combines spirituality with decay. A result I wasn’t prepared to deal with.

Yes, I am aware that the smoke was the result of the Balinese trying trying to keep their country and souls clean and beautiful. It was my attitude that made everything ugly. I, rather than Bali itself, was ruining my experience. Unfortunately, when one begins a journey on the wrong foot, it is difficult, in a mixed metaphor kind of way, to get the bad smell out of your nose. I carried this prejudice with me for much longer than I should have as I traveled through Bali. For this I am ashamed.

I took a taxi to my first hotel, ( a Sheraton) which offered me a sybaritic comfort which I didn’t expect. The hotel’s huge lobby was open to the warm breezes on all sides.The polished stone floor extended around me in every direction as I made my way to the teak reception desk. Gossamer curtains languidly rippled on both sides of the desk. An occasional rattan chair punctuated the otherwise empty space of the lobby. The desk goddess seemed very pleased with my arrival. She offered me fresh juices, and acknowledged the godliness that resided somewhere within me with a slight bow while pressing her hands gently to her forehead. I didn’t let on about the demons that were also in there.

My room was, of course, very pleasant and clean. Breakfast included every fruit and seafood I knew plus many I had never seen before. It also included the ham and eggs, pancakes and hash browns that the tourists happily gobbled up instead. The hotel offered a number of fresh and salt water swimming pools, but the star of its water show was a fresh water river that started from a waterfalls at the top of the hotel’s atrium. I would jump in there and ride the current past the restaurant to a gentle cataract where the river turned to the right  and carried on along the atrium’s foot. There it turned right again, took a small tumble and ended up at the top of the atrium where I would climb out, walk over to the other side and ride the river again.

Yes it was a very pleasant place, but it did not provide the sincere spirituality I came to Bali to experience. The hotel did provide a temple located on a spit of land that jutted out into the sea, but it was a fake. No one worshiped there except  honeymooners who used it to exercise the sacraments of self portraiture.

The next morning I walked over to Bali’s famous Kuta Beach which I found to be, (sigh), an “effing” circus. Girls around ten years old were patrolling the beach selling shaved ice and cotton candy while boys of the same age sold cold beer out of coolers that they dragged along on the sand. Older men in rather colorful outfits sat languidly on the beach smoking joints of “wacky tabacky” and blowing smoke over anyone who happened by in order to advertise the nature and quality of their product. Like my pleasantly decadent experience at the Sheraton, I didn’t travel all the way to Bali for this. After about 15 minutes I started to head back to my hotel, when I was surprised by a middle aged Chinese man. He stopped me and said, “Where’s your Wife?’

“Uh, she’s back at the hotel.”

“You’re not wearing a wedding ring. I think you have no wife.”

“So?”

“Relax. I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m the golf pro at the golf course up the road. I’d like to give you my address and invite you over for dinner tonight to meet my daughter.”

He went on to say that she spoke excellent English, had graduated from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and possessed a degree in accounting.

“She will be able to support herself.”

At that point I had a pretty good idea about what was going on. Before arriving in Bali I had read in the newspapers that an anti Chinese pogrom was occurring on some of the Islamic dominated islands. Many Chinese had, over the years, migrated to Indonesia where they worked hard, saved their money, and invested in their own education. This resulted with their becoming wealthy and forming the backbone of their adopted country’s business and professional communities. Many native Indonesians resented this success and felt that the Chinese had obtained it by taking advantage of them. In a similar manner to pogroms against Jews in Europe, hundreds of Chinese were being murdered, women raped, and homes and businesses burnt to the ground. I suspected the father hoped that his daughter and I would hit it off, and if one thing led to another, I would get her the hell out of Indonesia. I sympathized with his predicament, but my demons immediately began chatting away in my brain.

“Who in their right mind would stop a stranger on the street and invite him home for dinner”? “I’ll bet he doesn’t even have a daughter”. “He’s probably a pimp.” “Worse yet, he probably wants to get you alone so he can steal your money.”

These ugly, negative thoughts were coupled with a fear that even if this meeting were legitimate, it could be an extremely long and awkward dinner for everyone involved if either of us didn’t fancy the other. I respectfully declined his invitation. As I walked away I turned to see a look of desperate hopelessness cross his face. I still sometimes wonder if my life would have taken a different turn if I had agreed to have dinner with him and his daughter. I’ll never know.

Thwarted in my search for the Bali I expected, I decided the next day to walk across the end of the island to Sanur Beach, which was said to be a much more relaxed and traditional environment than Kuta Beach. Unfortunately, the walk didn’t sooth my soul. Instead it proved to be so annoying that any calm and patience I still retained disappeared completely. Bali’s economy had for years depended on the liberality of tourist spending. Tourism had boomed in the years just prior to my visit. As a result the government had set up a loan program for small entrepreneurs as a way to establish new tourist related businesses. Many young men thought that buying a van and ferrying tourists about the island would be a lucrative and easy way to make a living. Hundreds of them bought vans just before tourism dropped off due to a weakened world economy and the local problem of sectarian violence. At the time I visited Bali, (1999), there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young men driving empty vans and very few tourists for them  to take anywhere.

I had walked only about a quarter of a mile from my hotel, when the first van pulled over. “Where you going?”

“Sanur Beach.”

“Get in. I take you for only two American dollars.”

“I want to walk.”

“It’s a long way. You need a ride.”

“No”.

The driver looked at me like I was crazy, but left. I walked another hundred yards, and another van stopped. Two more minutes of walking and another pulled up. Then another and another. Over seventy vans offered me transport during the three hour walk to Sanur beach. At one point, one van pulled in behind another that was leaving after I had turned it down. I exploded, “Are you blind, man?!! How could you possibly think I need a ride when you can clearly see I just  turned one down?”

The driver looked a little frightened by my response, and quickly drove off.  By the time I reached Sanur beach, I was furious. I hated the vans. I hated the drivers. I hated the government that loaned them money. I hated the very air I breathed. My demons had me in a head lock and were about to pin me into the ground. It seemed like they had finally won.

I stepped onto Sanur Beach. It was quiet and peaceful. The serenity of the beach diverted my attention for a few moments, and my demons, not having an audience, loosened their grip on me.

A couple of families sat on blankets looking out at the placid ocean. There was no buying and selling or posing on the beach. I liked that. I took off my shoes and socks and walked to the water’s edge. I sat down on the sand and allowed little wavelets to lap up onto my feet, and then cat-like, rub their backs against my toes as they slid back into the sea. I sat like that for a half hour, until I knew I had regained my balance. The sun sank below the trees behind me. I put my shoes and socks back on and hailed a van to take me back to my hotel.

The restorative time I spent on Sanur Beach convinced me that I needed to put as much distance as possible between me and the touristy end of Bali around Kuta Beach and Denpasar. I needed to immerse myself into a more traditional Bali where I could perhaps find my better self and the lasting peace I sought. I checked out of the Sheraton the next morning and took a bus 59 kilometers up Bali’s east coast to Candi Dasa. There I rented a semi modern hut with a palm leaf roof and private toilet and hot shower. I then began exploring the rice fields and villages in the area.

What I saw wasn’t an easy or comfortable life. People worked hard yet remained poor. The villages seemed a little unkempt. Beauty and godliness were not readily visible. Yet people still made their little offerings each morning, and accepted their poverty with a stoic equanimity. They had found a way to avoid being miserable which I would have had a hard time imitating if I lived under similar circumstances. I knew they could teach me something about life, but at the time, that message didn’t immediately rise into my consciousness. Instead its meaning was trapped in a bubble that was barely rising within the viscous syrup of my bad attitude. Thankfully, my demons thought it unnecessary to comment about what I was seeing.

Though the villages were often barren and a bit ramshackle, the villagers themselves found a way to produce some spectacular art. Another puzzle my brain needed to digest.

After spending several days exploring the lowland villages on foot, I decided to rent a mountain bike and find the water gardens located high in the hills above Candi Dasa.

The water gardens were large ponds with attached canals that were originally controlled by Bali’s rulers. The canals ran out of all sides of the ponds down the mountain to irrigate Bali’s rice fields. Since rice was the primary food of the island, the rulers’ control of this water ensured their control of the island’s politics. The rulers had built palaces around the water gardens to highlight their own importance and that of the water itself.

I had a general idea where the water gardens lay, and was confident that I would be able to find my way as I went along. I  started out by biking about two miles down the coast on a paved road where I reached a hard packed dirt road that set off on my right. I turned onto it and began to climb. The incline wasn’t steep and after a half hour I had gained enough altitude to look back and see a stretch of jungle and the ocean beyond that. I found the view very pleasing, and was proud of my ability to make what were clearly astute navigational choices .

As I climbed higher I came across more and more rice fields arranged in terraces.

 A light breeze slid up the mountain from the ocean. That along with the lush beauty in which I was immersed, convinced me that I had finally found the Bali I had been seeking; a Bali that would eventually reach out and saturate me with spirituality and godliness. As I pedaled higher I felt my soul moving closer to the gods. My demons were taking a nap, and I was totally satisfied, both with Bali and myself.

I continued onward and upward. Ten minutes later two boys on a small motorcycle pulled onto my road from a side path.The boy driving the bike stopped, turned off the motor, and pointed to my watch. He held out his hand indicating he wanted me to put it there. My new attitude made me feel bulletproof, and I decided to play stupid. I smiled, looked at my watch and then the boy and said, “ten thirty”. He shook his head “No” and jabbed his finger angrily at my watch. I turned my watch toward his face, pointed to it and again said “ten thirty”. I maintained my smile and looked him squarely in the eye. I continued smiling at him until the boy on the back of the base poked the driver in the ribs and said something to him. The driver looked at me with disgust, started the bike up, and spun out in a shower of dust and gravel. I felt pretty smug as the boys headed down the mountain. I had defused a confrontation without waking my demons. After all, this was what spirituality was all about, wasn’t it?

The road then became a little steeper, and I had to stand on the pedals to continue upward. The rice paddies were becoming smaller and smaller, but the scenery was the most beautiful I had encountered so far.

I came to many forks in the road and guessed which ones would lead to the water gardens. These roads crisscrossed each other to form an impenetrable maze. My only guideline was to take whichever route took me higher. Soon I lost all sense of where I was.

Around two in the afternoon the road I was on became steeper and I had to dismount and begin pushing the bike up the hill. The last of the terraced rice fields were now about a half hour behind me. I hadn’t seen any people since I encountered the two boys. This road wasn’t as hard packed as the earlier ones, and soon became no more than two ruts with foot high grass growing in the middle. I hadn’t packed any food or water because I thought it would be quite easy to find the famous water gardens. I could feel my demons begin to stretch and yawn after waking from their long nap. They, like me were looking out at the dreary landscape of weeds and  jaundiced jungle. Some parts of the road didn’t even seem real anymore. At one point the road narrowed to a winding path on top of a ridge with sheer drop offs on each side. It resembled something you might see in a Roadrunner/ Wiley Coyote cartoon. I continued pushing the bike. The sun was hot and I removed my shirt as sweat sat on my back hoping for a cool breeze to carry it away. I was very thirsty. I couldn’t even generate enough spit to form a swallow. Most importantly, I was becoming more and more tired. The bike had become an anchor rather than a means to assist me in my ascent. I could feel my demons begin to dance with each other inside my head.

“You’re tired aren’t you Sparky?’ one said. “No, look at him, he’s exhausted.”said another.

I looked at my watch and it was about four o’clock in the afternoon.

“You’re lost, you have no idea where you are. You’ll never find the water gardens now.”

“It will be dark soon, and you’ve traveled too far to find your way home.”

“You’re going to die here, alone in this ugly countryside.”

“You thought you could gild your soul with a spirituality and godliness that you would find high above the common condition of mankind. How shallow and pathetic you are. Your hubris has led you here, to a pointless death and terminal insignificance ” 

I saw a couple of steps in front of a pile of bricks along the side of the road. I tossed my bike on the ground and collapsed onto the top step. I couldn’t go on. Once I sat down, I knew I would never have the ambition to stand up again. I no longer possessed the strength to resist my demons.

My demonic thoughts became even louder: “Admit it. You are finished! Cast off any hope. Hope is, and has always been merely an illusion.”

They began stomping their heavy feet, clapping their hands and chanting:

     “You are lost and           

     all alone,

     cast adrift,

     and can’t find home”

I sighed, accepting their judgement, ….and then, somehow, for some reason,  my sigh reversed itself into a deep breath. Something flowed into me from the surrounding desolation. It startled both me and the demons. I suddenly understood the godliness of  insignificance.

I smiled at the demons and replied, “Everything you have said may be true, but as usual, your words do nothing but mislead. None of what you have said really matters.”

The demons had stopped dancing and I could sense their puzzlement. They  couldn’t help but listen to my thesis though they feared they would not like what they were about to hear.

“Yes, I’m lost, but have I ever known exactly where I was? Has anyone? What difference does my present situation make when compared the normal state of human bewilderment? You predict that I may die in this lonely spot. So what. I was always going to die somewhere, and this place seems as appropriate as any. Exhausted? Yes, it’s true, I feel I can’t go on, but exhaustion is a feeling and as long as I can feel something I know I’m still alive, and as long as I’m alive I’m capable of  hoping that something can still save me.”

The demons sputtered, “But you are alone. There is no one and nothing that can save you or give you comfort here.”

“If I peel back all the layers of social relations and beliefs that make up my character, I can see that I, like everyone else, possess a core that consists of only myself. No one else is there. This lonely core has always existed under my, and everyone else’s, social  personality and is nothing to mourn or reject. It is the seed that grows into what we eventually become; the device  which we use to shape and give meaning to  all the social connections and relationships that we will layer around it. That lonely seed is the most important part of our existence and should be sought out and understood rather than avoided.”

The demons were talking but their words were garbled. I could no longer make out what they were saying. Good! At that moment a chicken walked out of the ruins behind me, brushed my shoulder as it passed and hopped down onto the step next to my feet. There it looked at me, bobbed its head a few times, looked at me again and then hopped down onto the road, where, as chickens are wont to do, it crossed over to the other side. My chest began to flutter with little puffs of laughter. “Silly Chicken.” A second later I could hear the demons scream as from a great distance, “Noooo.” and then there was total silence. My demons, at least for the time being, had completely disappeared. I sat on the steps of the ruined temple thinking about what could be so special about an ordinary chicken that could console me so much. My negative demons were already in a weakened state when the chicken appeared, but there was something about the lowly chicken that finally shut them up and released me from worry. It produced the final cure for my emotional fever and I didn’t even have to turn it into soup beforehand. I was grasping for an answer that I couldn’t quite capture though it seemed to be faintly caressing the tips of my fingers. Ah.  Got it! The chicken didn’t fear me! It had to be a domestic chicken! People and their assistance must be nearby. I struggled to get on my feet and stumbled over to the bike. I pulled it up by one handle and began to push it up hill while leaning on it for support. After about 50 yards I came to a crest, and there below me was a muddy lane passing through a dilapidated village.

Towards the end of the lane stood a lean-to that served as the village store. It sold not only things such as  condensed milk, and laundry detergent, but soda and snacks too. I bought a half gallon of warm Coca Cola and several packs of peanut M&M’s, and sat on the ground in front of the store to wolf down my purchase. After a few minutes I could feel the caffeine and sugar course through my veins. I could now confirm that I was no longer balancing on the knife-edge of death. I  eventually got up and asked the woman behind the counter the best way to get back to the coast, but she didn’t understand a word I was saying.  I concluded that I was still irretrievably lost, but she then turned her head and said something to someone in the store’s back room. A girl of about 14 still wearing her school uniform came out and said “How can I help you?” She drew me a map showing where just outside the village a trail took off to the right which would quickly lead me to a paved road that ran to the coast. She looked at my bike, smiled, and said “It’s all downhill from there.”

And so it was. I was soon flying down the tarmac with the wind pouring into my face. I had had a different kind of  epiphany than the one I had set out to find, a better one that allowed me the ability to experience happiness, (dare I say godliness?) no matter where circumstance might cast me. I was no longer bound to some idea of ethereal spirituality that was not part of the real world, a world whose flaws  could be just as heavenly as its comforts. I learned to look for god not in the clouds but in the mundane and lowly, in the insignificant details of everyday life. Of course, my demons do reappear from time to time, but they’ve learned their lesson, and their judgements are now much more tentative and easier to shrug off.

Postscript:

I got back to my hut about a half hour after sunset. I showered and ate dinner at a nearby restaurant. After dinner  I described my day to the English speaking owner.

He nodded several times while I was telling  my story and then said, “Those ruins you stopped at  might have been an ancient temple to Aditi/Bahuchara Mata.  She is the mother of all the other gods and the guardian of all life. No one worships her any more. It’s a shame”

I just now Googled  “Aditi/Bahuchara Mata”  to see what she looks like, and there she is in all her glory, riding on a huge chicken!!   (See: https:www.google.com/search?q=bahuchara+mata+photo&client=firefox-b-1-d&sa=X&sxsrf=ALeKk01_h1nDsZZz7Z8YvcR4yIELU8F8Dw:1603579930631&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=PGMayZtu9aJJZM%252CMcupCLk92ub6GM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQ3fZFq_eebQxp-V-h_gn70S3Qjww&ved=2ahUKEwjViInhqM7sAhXELs0KHdw6CXgQ9QF6BAgFECs&biw=1920&bih=966#imgrc=PGMayZtu9aJJZM