Yes, Bali is beautiful. Bali is every color of green and every shade of shade. Bali is flowers. Bali is rice fields. Bali is streams and jungles and insta-storms. Bali is wild.
Bali is three sticks of incense: Faith. Ritual. Service.
And Bali will be Bali regardless of inhabitants, which is what makes the Balinese like the delicate petal flowers offered during prayers, like the single grains of rice fit into the sucking mud by stooped, camera-shy ancients, and like the aromatic hint of incense rising skyward as the multitudes scooter around scooters and oddly-unflappable dogs.
Faith is the first stick of incense. Faith, one side of the triangular cornerstone upon which the Balinese rely to light the way within a consuming jungle. The jungle does as the jungle will do, and the Balinese have drawn from it, gathered lessons of birth, life, and death. In this yogic triad, each aspect has its place and each place is equally sacred.
The Tridatu bracelets round my wrist remind me of the two purification ceremonies I experienced while there. Each ceremony was different because I was not the same person the second time around. During the first, I was a visitor to the jungle, my skin still wet with sanitizer, mosquito spray, and sunblock. My mind, feigning cool behind oversized black glasses while screaming my latest mantra, “Holy shit, I actually did it!”
I was in a hurry. I wanted to jump in. I wanted to relax. I wanted to “get it” – whatever it was – and I was willing to work for it because I was taught that everything comes to those who work hard. And no one can work harder than me.
And then Jennifer happened. (“Jennifer” is usually a proper noun, but I’ve discovered that Jennifer can also be an adjective and a verb.)
“Focus on a tree,” Jennifer said one morning.
“What?” I said, swatting a mosquito from my calf.
As if she heard my silent question, Jennifer repeated, “Focus on a tree.” (Yes, mind reader is another Jennifer attribute firmly slotted in the adjective column of being “Jennifered,” which come to think of it, is an adverb. Sigh…)
But which tree is the right tree? My gaze darted from tree to tree. Some had prehistorically large leaves that reminded me of long, talon monster feet from Where the Wild Things Are. Some trees were solitary, direct spears pointing to bustling, symphonic white clouds, while others had huge canopies full of birds and squirrels and vines tethering them to more trees that I couldn’t even make sense of.
Determined as I was to find the “right tree,” I continued to search until they all bled together – shades of life, shadows of decay, a leaf wafting toward the jungle floor. All of it was mesmerizing, distracting, and confusing, and then another thought chased me down, tripping me up. “Holy mackerel, what if I pick the wrong tree?” It felt like a Holy Grail test, and I was failing, enlightenment just beyond my grasping hand.
Now, dear reader, remember I am a yoga teacher. I know the absurdity of these musings. But I am human, fallible and full of wants, riddled with questions, searching for answers, and then grabbing for more questions with two fists. Thus, every moment of every day I’ve had the opportunity to dive into practice, to explore the first yoga sutra, “and now the practice of yoga begins.” For me, it began and continues to begin with the first deeply-felt breath, the drop of my shoulders, the lift of my chest. The breath as it crawls up on legs delicate as spiders, touching, tasting, deciding, and reaching before scurrying down lower and lower, broadening, enlarging its internal nest with each exhalation.
That’s where the peace, a visceral silence that acts like a tranquilizer dart straight to my monkey mind, tangled in my egocentric questions, is. Picture a leaf, fallen from the tree that created it for a purpose, nurtured it, and then let it go. Now it rests, separated from attachment and the definition of lying in the shadow of life striving; let go of, no longer that, and without definition, no worry of becoming.
As a teacher, I bring my student self to each class, knowing full well that we are all seekers. Like the tree, like the falling leaf, and like the squirrel dashing and jumping from vine to branch to leaf, we all are in a jungle. My job as teacher is to offer shade when needed, heat when desired, and always a safe place to fall, whether the descent is as graceful as a broad leaf through humid air or as spectacularly swift as a plummeting coconut. We all fall. Falling is part of life. Falling demonstrates transition of “presence.”
Each of us is in a transition of presence.
Bali invigorated my faith, my humanness, and my sense of humor.
The Balinese are rooted in ritual, traditions that link families, build and bind communities. Light the second stick of incense, and pray for the here and now. Balinese life is imbued with ceremony. It’s not relegated to any specific day of the week; it is seamlessly woven into every moment of life, creating order and purpose. It is experienced through each of the senses, clarified by their depth of faith. Everyone has a job to do, his or her part to play. Each job is important. Nothing can be skipped. Therefore each is sacred, tying everyone together, empowering the meekest and steadying the most bold. Ritual clears a path through chaos. Ritual is the sattva between the tamas and rajas; it is the faith between human and environment. Repetition is transformative; practice makes transition of presence more fully felt.
Repetition is transformative, and, yes, I meant to repeat that. By the second week, I had undergone my own transformation. The ongoing cage match between my striving ego and the attention-mongering of my monkey mind fell away, or, better said, I let it go. I loosened my grip. I fell beneath the shady jungle foliage. I surrendered. I saw the tree. I watched the leaf. I heard the rooster. I woke before the bell. I noticed the giant fern unrolling little by little beneath the cover of the palm and the frangipani. I was as still as the clever gecko. No need to stand out. I could change and blend because I let go of what I thought I needed to define me.
We are all in a jungle – it is our host. Call the jungle what you wish; skyscrapers looming over quadrants controlled by three colors, a freeway strung with ruby lights, a body striving, possibly a mind at odds within its host. Light the third stick of incense. Service is the practical application of faith and ritual. Service is the opportunity to color outside the lines, to open up and give what you can in the moment based on awareness of the needs of others. Service is faith and ritual individualized. Service has no fanfare. Service enlarges the nest for exhalation. Service quiets the mind.
Service has been my salvation. In service, I drop away to honor the “Us.” As a teacher, equanimous service with soft eyes, my heart, and my intuition lead me there. There, my faith is unwavering. I have made many changes in my life; transition of presence is fresh, innocent, yet also something ancient that directs me to share, informs me how to share with grace, honesty, respect, and love. Bali allowed me to fall, to dance in the heat, and to rest in the shade. Bali didn’t care that I was there. Bali does as Bali will do. I am the gecko on the wall, teaching how to hold on while letting go with faith the landings will be numerous because each moment the practice of yoga begins.
