The Accidental Seeker

TAMPAKSIRING, BALI, INDONESIA

Continued healing, I said to myself, silently, each time I bowed my head in front of the fountain, each time I dunked my head in its waters. I said it again as I splashed my face and touched the water to my lips. I did these things three times in a row, repeating the mantra, at each of fourteen fountains. One hundred sixty-eight wishes. 

At Tirta Empul Temple for this purification ceremony, my guide prepared an offering, lighting incense. We sat and said nothing before entering the pools. As he explained the ritual, telling me I should think of a wish or hope to repeat silently to myself, “continued healing” leapt into my head—for my hips, my frozen shoulder, my perimenopausal body; for my friend’s cancer diagnosis; for my mother and her ailments; for my snowballing grief over losing my best friend, my home, one dog and then another, and my father in less than three and a half years. 

I hadn’t come to Bali as a seeker. I’d simply come as a traveler, a vacationer. But the visit coincided with Galungan—a holiday in Balinese Hinduism that celebrates the victory of dharma (good) over adharma (evil) and is marked by ancestral spirits visiting their earthly homes. The ten-day event culminates in the celebration of Kuningan, when they return to the heavens.

The streets were decorated with penjors, bamboo poles that arc to suspend offerings at the tip. On Kuningan Day, celebrants prepare special offerings, and yellow is a featured color. Yellow, the color my father and I shared. Here it symbolizes prosperity, wealth, gratitude toward the divine and the ancestors. For my father, a yellow rose or a sunflower on my bedside table said welcome home.