Nyepi, Ogoh-ogoh and Message to the World
If the world is able to pause for only an hour, a great deal of energy will be saved. It is not only fuel energy, but also human inner energy.
The Day of Silence or Nyepi in the Balinese calendar of Saka 1945 falls on Wednesday, 22 March 2023. Over the last three decades, a parade of ogoh-ogoh (evil-looking hulk effigies) has always marked this holiday on the day of pengrupukan, a ritual on the eve of Nyepi.
The COVID-19 pandemic halted this parade for two years. However, this year the parade will be resumed. What is the relationship between ogoh-ogoh and Nyepi?
Nyepi is the Saka New Year for Balinese Hindus. Meanwhile, the ogoh-ogoh parade is a ritual regarded as strengthening one in welcoming and entering the new year.
It is common knowledge that on the day of Nyepi, the Balinese Hindu community observes restrictions, which are amati geni, amati lelungan and amati lelanguan: no lighting fires, no traveling and no entertainment. These restrictions translate to being quiet at home, engaged in introspection and contemplation.
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In the context of philosophy, the three restrictions have the function of self-restraint, a basic principle of social life for the preservation of order.
With the three restrictions, social dynamism comes to a halt and automatically, the urge to reflect arises.
The awareness of self-restraint on the Nyepi holiday certainly induces contemplation, inspiring one to meditate on one’s personal and social dynamism over the past year. This helps one realize past mistakes and successes so as to further choose the correct strategy to improve one’s future.
The three restrictions have the function of self-restraint, a basic principle of social life for the preservation of order.
In various Balinese Hindu rituals (as is the case with other religions), every communication with God should be conducted in a clean condition. Every individual must be clean; the same is true of the environment, even the equipment for prayers.
For this reason, the Balinese Hindu community maintains the ritual called prascita (self-purification), mecaru (environmental purification) and mesucian (equipment purification) before performing prayers.
Dialogue with oneself, God and nature
The Nyepi holiday should be seen in the context of being the most complete and tangibly the greatest communication with God in the Balinese Hindu community.
Around a week ahead of Nyepi, millions of Balinese Hindus rarely fail to join a parade to the beach for what is known as melasti. This ritual purifies the equipment and other means of prayers of the Balinese Hindu community, owned by individuals as well as groups.
On the eve of Nyepi, the Balines Hindu community executes the pengrupukan ritual. Millions of Balinese Hindus perform pecaruan (cleaning) in their respective homes and in villages, cities and even the whole province. Pengrupukan is in fact a ritual to purify and stabilize the environment. Caru has the meaning of being clean.
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Every community member performing prayers sprinkles sacred water on the body or observes prascita, symbolizing self-purification.
Therefore, on the Nyepi holiday the whole environment has been purified and cleaned so that it is the most ideal moment to have a dialogue with oneself, with nature and with God the Almighty.
Nyepi creates an atmosphere that most enables people to conduct introspection and serves as a resource of awakening. It is this awakening that becomes the inner resource people draw upon to lead their lives in the coming Saka New Year.
Then where is the role of ogoh-ogoh, which are in the public spotlight?
Ogoh-ogoh are a sociopsychological justification related to religiosity. In this case, it is Balinese Hinduism. Their appearance and later their burning give rise to a kind of self-confidence in the community that evils can be defeated, thus generating or strengthening the conviction of the purified environment and individual selves.
Nyepi creates an atmosphere that most enables people to conduct introspection and serves as a resource of awakening.
Ogoh-ogoh are objects of ridicule directed at evil forces by men. By shaping evils as ogoh-ogoh, people deride them as abnormal, obese hulks with oversized chests and misshapen faces, walking in an ungainly way.
The effigies are later burned as a symbol of the destruction of evil influences on individuals as well as the environment, and the successful human liberation from such influences.
Yet ogoh-ogoh are actually simply symbols, resulting from social consensus. So, it is unnecessary for them to be big hulks, even unnecessary for them to be built at all.
On the pengrupukan day, quite a number of symbols indicate the elimination of evils, such as the rituals of environmental cleaning and earth beating.
Sweeping symbolizes environmental cleaning. Earth beating symbolizes the removal of evil forces; so does the sounding of wooden tubes and the like to produce loud noises. All of them constitute traditional beliefs handed down to eliminate evils.
The ogoh-ogoh phenomenon appeared only in the middle of the 1980s in response to the accidents occurring as a result of the use of bamboo firecrackers at the time. It was thus a long time after the emergence of torch and wooden-tube parades (marching neatly, at a low cost and in good order, producing a pleasant sound without clashing).
Tourism business or politics seems to have turned this expensive ogoh-ogoh ritual into a massive event, joyfully anticipated by children as well as teenagers, who are willing to spend weeks building just one ogoh-ogoh.
Message to the world
As a cultural product rooted in religiosity, Nyepi should actually not apply to only the Balinese Hindu community. It can inspire and encourage cultural reform (development of the product of human thoughts}.
The car-free day in major cities in Indonesia bears the trace of the inspiration and cultural extension of Nyepi. The public needs convenience without having to be disturbed by the noises of motor vehicles.
Consequently, Nyepi can also give a message to the world: reflect, contemplate, for a time. Many such moments and opportunities are available at official meetings in several countries, between countries and also nonstate programs.
Appropriately, for example, when the United Nations is in session, it begins with one to two minutes’ reflection before its program starts.
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It is not to pray for deceased figures, but to reflect on peace, termination of international conflict and tension. The same is done at sessions of NATO, the European Union, ASEAN, APEC and others.
Or it is not mistaken if the UN appeals to the world to take just an hour’s break from all activities on a certain agreed day. In practice, if the world is able to pause for only an hour, a great deal of energy will be saved. It is not only fuel energy, but also human inner energy.
Hopefully Nyepi is capable of inspiring a ceasefire or some other restraint to the various conflicts in the world, including the Russia-Ukraine war.
GPB Suka Arjawa, Professor of Sociology of Religion, faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Udayana University
This article was translated by Aris Prawira.