Author: Sebastien Blanc
Publication: Times
Date: December 5, 2007
URL: http://www.thetimes.co.za/article.aspx?id=650483
Hindu priests on the island of Bali suggest
a day of silence to help fight global warming
Hindu priests on the island of Bali, where
the world's nations are gathered to come up with an answer for global warming,
think they have one solution - a day of silence.
The proposal harks back to a traditional Balinese
festival when everything is switched off and shut down for 24 hours, to try
to persuade demons that the island is uninhabited and thus without fresh souls
for them to steal.
"We learn from our ancestors to respect
the wishes of nature," said Bhagawandwija, a 63-year-old priest who has
been handing out leaflets outside the international climate change conference
taking place here.
"Imagine if all the countries in the
world observed one day of silence!"
Indonesia's Tourism Minister Jero Wacik said
many locals on this resort island, which has long attracted visitors from
around the globe, believe the world should copy the festival's silence.
"Many people in Bali propose that if
possible the world has a silent day - not working, all electricity off,"
he told reporters. "We save one day."
In the island's rich Hindu heritage, the Nyepi
festival is the time when evil spirits return to Earth. To persuade them there
are no souls left to haunt, Bali shuts down almost entirely.
All restaurants and discos close, to the great
annoyance of tourists who do not realise they are being protected from malignant
forces.
Airliners are grounded and the roads are deserted.
It is forbidden to turn on lights, make a fire - or even make a noise.
If that seems too drastic a measure to take,
local newspapers have been stressing to conference delegates the concept of
"Tri Hita Karana," or the need for harmony with the environment.
According to another Balinese custom, anyone
who cuts down one tree is obliged to re-plant 10, said Ida Pedanda Gede Ketut
Sebali Tianyar Arimbawa, president of Indonesia's highest Hindu authority.
He too is convinced that ancestral traditions
can provide solutions to the woes of global warming - and points to the subaks
or traditional irrigation systems which have watered Bali's rice terraces
for centuries.
The 1,200 subaks on Bali allow water, which
comes mainly from four high-level lakes, to flow gently downhill between paddy
fields laid in terraces and bordered by irrigation channels.
"The subak is the best irrigation system
in the world," he says.
And even after our lives have ended, we can
still make a difference.
Cremation, he says, is simply "the best
way of returning to nature."
