Sunset in Bali. Author photo.
Beginning at 6 AM on Wednesday March 25, the Indonesian island of Bali entered a complete and total state of lockdown. Due to the spread of coronavirus, major cities and countries throughout the world have already entered similar states of lockdown in order to slow the transmission of the virus. But in Bali, the lockdown was different. The primary purpose was not virus mitigation, but to observe the Hindu holy day of Nyepi - a day of total silence during which people are encouraged to engage in quiet and contemplative reflection, free from the noise and distraction of temporal affairs.
Unlike lockdowns in Italy or India, Bali’s day of complete silence includes a moratorium on all light and noise. All flights to the island (to the extent there even are flights any more) were suspended. All lights, including streetlights and interior residential lighting, were turned off. Internet service throughout the island was even shut down. No one is allowed to exit their dwelling (save for emergencies) during Nyepi, and these provisions are strictly enforced by local neighborhood watchmen called pecalang. For 24 hours, every person on the island was forced to contemplate the state of the world and their lives in complete silence.
Nyepi happens every year in Bali. But the timing this year - given the world is in the middle of a pandemic that threatens everything we’ve come to expect about modern life - was especially poignant. Indonesian authorities have so far refused to issue complete lockdown orders for the country, concerned about the economic fallout and the difficulty of enforcement (I am, in case anyone was wondering, generally sympathetic to this line of reasoning). So Bali entering a voluntary lockdown to observe a day a quiet reflection seemed somehow very fitting, and in a way almost comforting.
Along with every other person in the world, the daily - often hourly or even minute by minute - breaking of big and shocking news stories has had me on edge. I am having trouble sleeping and focusing, as my fallible and limited human mind tries to wrap itself around the enormity of what is transpiring. The mundane work of today seems somehow very small and meaningless as the full force of this catastrophe - the effects of which are still not yet knowable - weighs on me. Some days are better, especially when I am able to stay off social media and focus my attention on every day acts of living. But it’s hard to, say, work on a grant proposal or write an op-ed when events in the world are playing out at a speed and scale and ferocity that are almost unfathomable.
When Silent Day came to Bali, it forced us - all of us - on this island to disconnect for a day and a night, and to sit with our thoughts and our prayers and ourselves for a while, free from the thunderstorm of tweets and models and predictions and uncertainty. It helped me to find some peace, at least for a time. Events in the world did not slow down one bit - the US Congress continued to fight and bicker about a $2 trillion rescue package; hospitals in New York continued to overflow; emerging markets continued to feel the impending crunch of a liquidity crisis. But for a time I was sheltered from these things by the silence and the darkness, and life in its infinite capacity simply endured and carried on in the island, cloaked in the stillness of a holy day.
Early this morning, before the sun rose I stepped outside and looked up at the night sky. Normally you can see a few stars in Bali, if the pollution is not too bad. But with no cars on the roads and no light pollution, the sky last night was a fantastic canopy of lights smeared across the face of the cosmos. You see that when you go camping in Joshua Tree. You never see it in a major metropolitan area like Denpasar.
Except one night per year when the island goes into hibernation and the breadth and the beauty and the complexity of the universe opens itself up to whoever can sneak a peak without getting caught by the pecalang. Light that has traveled millions and billions of years through time and space to crash into a dark and silent island at exactly that moment, unaware and untroubled by the little dramas of the human race, and somehow the bigness of it all gives a small measure of comfort in these days of chaos and plague. I don’t think Indonesia should go into complete, extended lockdown - but I think many places and people might benefit from taking a day of rest to silently contemplate the world and the depth of its mystery right now.
