Photo
details
Culture is what makes Man different from animal. True religion, which is pure, beautiful thoughts was always the basis of true
culture. Therefore, cultural crisis of Indonesia, which is observed today,
is due to crisis
of it’s religion.
Q:
What exactly happens?
A:
Earlier the land of thousands islands, today known as Indonesia was famous for it's culture. Last was so beautiful and rich because it was
based on local religious values. Religion was basis for culture and daily’s
routine of nearly each citizen of a country. Unfortunately,
today the separation between two – i. e. religion and culture - takes place.
Indonesians give less and less importance to their spiritual values and their
traditional arts and amazing skills suffer corruption and vanishing. If earlier Indonesians used to
spend a good part of each day immersed in pure thoughts and noble conduct, now
they’re getting deeper and deeper immersed into pursuing of mere physical
pleasures and money. When one builds all his life around mere animal pleasures
alone, it ultimately leads him/her to dangerous results. These results can be
observed in some “civilized” countries very clearly nowadays… Due to propaganda
of “civilized” countries is very intensive in Indonesia, less and less
recognition of dangers of physical pleasures takes place even in this
spiritual, pure place now. Western idea of physical joy being the highest goal
of life is brought to the land of thousands islands with tourists and
businessmen of all sorts. Of course, it plays destructive role in every place
where it is promoted. Nuclear weapons make “advanced” countries feel proud, but
their existence only adds more stress and pain to this already painful
situation. Thus you can see: as combined result of many reasons, Indonesian
people suffer loss of all their best traditions and spiritual values these days.. Even the abnormal growth of population of Jawanese people has roots in this mentioned spoiling of
culture. The population overgrowth leads, in turn, to ecological and social
degradation. Smoke of burning rubbish, heat of direct sunlight (due to big
trees are destroyed), stinky dirty rivers, crowds of poor people and thousands
vehicles producing terrible noise and additional pollution of air: such are
basic impressions of every person who ever visited lowland Jawa,
especially Jakarta
and other cities. Government moves crowds of Jawanese
to other islands, but hardly anything is done in order to cure the root of this
calamity*. Mere external measurements are not sufficient. The deeper reasons of
disease must be attended. The socio-environmental disaster, from which Jawa suffers, now spreads onto other Indonesian islands,
including some of the last pure, healthy places on Earth**.
Due
to above mentioned reasons, more and more time is being spent by Indonesians in
doing business (which helps to cover their fast-growing physical demands),
while less and less time is dedicated to practice of traditional dance, music,
theater etc. Of course - without practice - unique arts and skills degrade into
their most primitive - tourism oriented - variants, or even disappear
completely. For example, the tourist-oriented Barong dance of today doesn't radiate even a 1/100-th part of beautiful spiritual
energy, that genuine Barong dance radiates. Same is true for nearly
every item of art found in Indonesian culture nowadays. To meet a genuine Piece
of Art takes greater and greater efforts now.
We
personally have no doubts that Indonesia
undergoes cultural disaster, which makes even other nations feel poor. However,
we also believe that – all together and with God's grace – we can solve this problem.
Since we don’t want arts and other beautiful traditions of Indonesia to
disappear, we support local culture. We encourage local traditions, but not the
cruel of them (such as cock-fights etc.). In addition, we can't support
combination of sophisticated traditional elements with more trivial,
and even primitive ones. A simple example: we do not support wearing beautiful
sarong (traditional piece of cloth, with which Indonesian covers lower half of
body) with trivial T-shirts, baseball caps etc. If we dress ourselves, we dress
into something what is both good for local climate and doesn't go against good
local traditions. Another example: a home
building. If we build a home, we make last in traditional style, which
also naturally corresponds the local environment and climate. We use only
fast-renewable resources (like bamboo, for example) for building, so that to
prevent damage to environment (see above photo). Moreover, we strive to make
more good than bad: all our Nature-damaging activities, such as home building,
burning of rubbish etc., are followed by doing good service to Nature: we
remove rubbish from rivers and ocean, we plant indigenous trees etc. (see Protection of animals
and environment of Indonesia).
Let us close this chapter with quote from Bhagavan Sathya Sai Baba on culture:
“Love is the form of the Divine. The first impulse that
emanated from man was Prema (Divine love). All other
things came thereafter. Every child that is born,
immediately develops love for the mother. Every child tries to recognize at the
outset its mother and father. In the same manner, every individual should recognise the land of his birth and his Samskrithi
(cultural heritage). One's nation and one's culture should be revered as one's
parents. The nation is one's mother. One's culture is the father. This profound
truth was proclaimed by Lord Rama when He declared:
"Mother and the Motherland are greater than Heaven itself." (Written on “Thought for the day” -board in Prashanti Nilayam,
India, October
22nd 2008).
*This policy can be compared to
cutting off branches of cancer-affected tree and attaching them to other – more healthy trees. May be, healing by this method is
possible, if only portions of suffering trees are much smaller in size than the
healthy trees. However, in reality, some "sick branches" are even
bigger than trees to which they're being attached. Jawanese,
for example, are very large in number. Many of them
reproduce themselves via corrupted practice of harems. To be exact: many many Jawanese men produce offsprings from more than one woman. Often they don't even
take any care of all their "wives" (which are in fact just abandoned
women dispersed throughout Indonesia)
and of all their children. These men claim they do same what Mohhamad did. Unfortunately, while number of such men is
very large in Indonesia,
those who can show them the path of pure, healthy, harmonious life, are very very few... Inner beauty and purity are laughed upon – by Jawanese themselves, as well as by some foreign
sex-tourists.
**Now this disaster also comes to Bali.
Balinese people is a unique little nation. For
centuries, thanks to principle of TRIHITA-KARANA, found in Balinese religion,
they maintained relative harmony with Nature. Having all kinds of neighbors and
visitors, they kept their island relatively healthy and beautiful. Now,
however, the impact of immorality and egotism is stronger than ever. Everything
becomes a mess even here – in Bali... This is
why we have all reasons to invest all our resources into propagation (among at
least native Balinese) ideas of love and respect for their own religion and
culture. Otherwise, we will have another Kalimantan
here... Look at this former Green Paradise – a lowland Kalimantan!
Just 30 years ago, wasn't it all a Great
Green Forest,
full of animals and flowers, of crystal-clear rivers, which were full of fish? Kalimantan was so healthy. It was a Man-of-Adventures-
best-best dream. Traditions also were rich. People were all smiling.. Now this island is almost entirely converted into ugly,
sad cemetery of health and beauty... Oil palm plantations, as well as smoky
fields (a burnt off forests) spread everywhere within only 2 decades. This
landscape is not only less healthy, less oxygen-productive. It is also sooo boring. Few National Parks were gazetted
on the island, but in reality only 1-2% of their territories are protected.
Namely: few sq. miles around headquarters of some of these Parks, and along
main tourist routs - this is all what is indeed protected. Beware to visit
other parts of those parks. You'll meet local policemen, park rangers, and of
course, local villagers, occupied with illegal logging and hunting. In some
parks I prefer to stay far even from those who offer me service in kind manner
(such as guiding etc.). I already know that this will be quite questionable
service..
This page was last updated by Alexey Zborovskiy
on November 3rd 2008
Back
to our Projects