Bali, March 2019
It is Nyepi, the holy sacred day of silence in Bali and we are in the local Balinese village nestled into a lush green coconut forest. It is one-third into our Zenthai annual teacher training to reach a ‘day off’. However, I feel it more aptly descried as a ‘day in‘.
Wow, a day dedicated to fully dive into a full embrace of reality, away from all our conditioned ‘things to do‘. Where else in this world does an entire island ‘stop’ to immerse into the completeness of silence? A day to step away from all the distractions around thoughts, noise, food, internet and people. This is a day to simply drop into a deep communion with oneself. YUM.
There is an honourable bow to the obvious governmental bodies that establish an annual day dedicated to sacredness and niskala — the ‘world we cannot see‘. No lights, no traffic, no airport, no noise, little talk , movement restricted to within one’s property. It would be a monumental drop in revenue for everything in this island, holding 4-5 million people, to stop for 24 hours. However, this is what is obviously primary — according to Balinese custom, appeasing the Gods comes first, therefore, this crucial act of purification is above anything to do with dollars.
According to local belief, all sleeping evil spirits are awakened from their hiding spaces on the day before with ceremonies full with vibrancy, fire and noise. When they arrive to see the commotion, they are met with a pervading quietness, so they move onto new land to cause their potential trouble.
With this analogy, in this day of silence, we could consider we use the practices of silence, honesty and self enquiry to allow our worn-out conditionings to come to the surface. Here they are revealed, and we are given a precious opportunity to see them and thus allow them to pass.
It is a great revelation of how we can choose to consistently use these practices to allow us to fly in the wide open untouched places.
With love,
