Samsara Bali, The Living Museum

Samsara Bali is an open living museum located in Jungutan, in the surrounding nature of Karangasem Regency, Bali. Having Mount Agung right in front of your eyes, this energy of everything around, I call it “The power of the universe” is immediately present.

Here everyone can gain valuable experience and knowledge about different rituals in the Balinese life cycle. Instant Karma Magazine had the opportunity to make an interview with Agung Gunarthawa, Co-Founder of Samsara Bali Living Museum and part of a Brahman (“Brahmin” – priest caste) family of Karagasem.

We took this opportunity to learn more about this place and its visionaries.

Interview with Agung Gunarthawa

A Message of Inspiration from Samsara Living – Bali now 2021 (Interview with I.B. Agung Gunarthawa)

How did you get started with Samsara Bali, what is the inspiration ?

First of all, thank you for the opportunity. It started with a sense of urgent concern to do an initiative effort to preserve, research, develop and actualizing all the values that Bali has. One of the reasons for this is because of the community, especially the younger generation like me or even younger, although they may carry out the traditional rituals and so on, we are not sure that they’re completely understood.

If people don’t understand the meaning of our rituals, it’ll be even more difficult to invite to participate in preservation, conservation and so forth.

Therefore, collectively, me, my family as well as the community took the initiative to build this place as a centre of research, development and actualization of Balinese values, cultural values and ritual traditions.To also properly translate all these values so they can be useful in our daily life.

We believe everything that is contained in the series of the life cycle of Balinese people. During its time, which was the peak of civilization, these results of its highest techno–logy were born out of necessity.

For example, the “Ngrujak” ritual. It’s a ritual where you make a type of fruit salad using specific fruit ingredients for pregnant Balinese women in their first month of pregnancy. There were reasons for why this was done.This premise is what we in Samsara Bali Living Museum, are looking to explore, research, develop and translate.

We dig the literacy from ancient “Lontar” manuscripts and adapt the philosophy as they were still very abstract.

Our role in Samsara Bali is to translate, make the relevance and actualize these ancient, pure and noble values into this modern life because we believe will be very beneficial in everyday life.

Another example of this, every stage of the Balinese ceremonies is never far from the role of the rare plants I’ve showed you earlier. After consulting and collaborating with experts and researchers who understands the function and benefits of these plants, this format will eventually arrive and connect with everything Wellness related, wellness products, wellness experience and wellness tourism which will greatly benefit the community itself.

To start this initiative effort, it must be created systematically and fundamentally which will have a broad impact. Therefore, we see that the first thing we must explore and share to the public are the basics which is the cycle of human lives in Bali, because eventually when we need to translate things in more details related to rituals, traditions, culture and daily things, all will inevitably in the life cycle.

One of our main duties in Samsara Bali is to develop, packaged, narrated and put together this very basic value so we can have a holistic knowledge base. Again, Samsara means the Balinese life cycle, from a person‘s existence in the mother’s womb all the way throughout their life all the way until after death (14 Ceremonies in a lifetime).

Who are you according to the Balinese tradition ?

Well, as a preliminary in–formation, let me introduce a bit about my family background. My family and I are within the spiritual environment.

My parents were Hindu priests and priestesses, which in Balinese, are called „Pedande“. My parents and ancestors are spiritualists. I was raised within the values of spirituality, tradition and rituals therefore we feel like we have an objective perspective looking at the current situation.

The knowledge we received at home, although we don’t fully understand, we still have the knowledge and information more complete than in other parts of our community, where we saw a big gap and inequality and the values that I was raised with were not understood by most of the community in mainly urban spaces.

This is why we feel the urgency to convey and deliver these values to the community. Our role in this, as a family who were blessed with all this knowledge, is to transform this information and spread it to as many people as possible with the hope to benefit their lives. That’s why we founded the Samsara Bali Living Museum.

How do you convey this to the Balinese, especially the young generation ?

There is a clear contradiction between cultural preservation and the demands of life. On one side, the young generation is expected to make a living to support their family by doing urbanization, while on the other side, once they’re there, all the tradition and culture related duties are neglected.

They have to choose on what they should focus on while juggling their economy related demands. Now we realize that these two things can actually be merged together or aligned by creating productive activities in the rural spaces such as this place which is only 10 km away from Mount Agung.

If we do this, then all the dilemmatic young generation won’t be having this problem. Not only to conduct productive activities but also to carry out their tradition and cultural duties.

What are your personal dreams and goals for Samsara Bali?

My fundamental hope is that this kind of initiative can be implemented in as many areas as possible, in Bali or even all over Indonesia as this was our original goal. As for Samsara Bali, the aspiration is to restore Bali to its identity to those noble values. As a community, we’ll be a lot happier if this can be done by everyone.

What is Samsara Bali’s message for the people in the world ?

If we live our life according to these values of the past, which were the result of the peak of the civilization of our ancestors at the time, it will become the greatest future for all that is on earth. I also think that this will be the future of tourism. We cannot continue as we are and that we need to apply this vision so that people can come and learn. This is the future of the generations yet to come.

If you could change anything about the current situation in Bali, what would it be ?

Bali is an island that has the task of contributing to the sustainability of the world and human beings of all kinds that are living on it. For Bali, in my opinion, this needs to be strengthened. Moreover,we need to return back to the strength and values that were passed down by our ancestors so we can inspire the world and re-raise the spirit of these values.

The best example for this, in relation with environmental sustainability, is the conception of Balinese New Year’s or the Saka New Year we celebrate with Nyepi or Silent Day.

Aside from the religious narrative that comes with it, articulately the message is self-introspection and how we can implement one of the values, Tri Hita Karana in a real way. On that day, we’re not allowed to leave the house, not allowed to light fire and not allowed to do entertainment activities. To refer back to the initial point of why I think that Bali has a very fundamental role for the world.

Why should people come to Bali ?

My hope for Bali in this pandemic situation is so great, because I believe that this pandemic is the best moment to restore the Balinese values. Of course, there are all of these negative impacts on the economic downturn that affected all of us, but this should make us eel more empathy to all.

On the other hand, don’t forget that we also need to be thankful, because finally this earth had been given a chance to breathe, decreasing pollution and crime rate, decreasing deforestation and no traffic jams in big cities. Now if we talk about global recuperation, today is when the world starts to recuperate.

What I’d like to say is that my hope for Bali after this pandemic in regards to tourism, is that the tourists that are coming are the ones who can appreciate Bali as it should be. Not the ones which come to destroy, change or influence with non-Balinese character.

We have to understand this pandemic as the best moment to reset everything, including tourism. So, in the future, tourism in Bali can be good tourism, responsible to the environment and responsible to human life.

Matur Suksema!

VISIT SAMSARA BALI LIVING MUSEUM