Journey over the Earth
13.1
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About how warm it was, and how far...
About the abundant riches in Nature, the deep-green, large-leaved wealth of plants pumping themselves up from the soil with irrepressible vitality, the sweet-smelling flowers with fluttering butterflies as big as small birds, and the broad fans of palm trees with squirrels chasing each other.
Or about the countless hens with their chicken, the dogs and cats with their endless offspring that belong to no-one, providing a pleasant background music of cackling and barking. About the narrow corridors between the small yards in the kampong where people live together in large, extended families and where you can lose your way so easily. And about the humid heat that paralyzes you completely and obliges you to remain seated under one of those shady trees and just share in that slow, spicy, sunny life around you. About all these things I could tell you.
Nature
Life on this island follows very different patterns than in our Western world. When you stay for some time amidst the people of the kampong, participating in their life, slowly but surely you start to imagine that you’re on another planet.
The tropical surroundings have so much to offer human beings that there is no direct necessity to defend oneself against Nature. On the contrary, the sensible thing to do is to undergo Nature as passively as possible, taking care not to resist the heavy, moist heat, because it would only make you ill very soon.
Attitude
And anyway, Nature does not withhold anything from the people here. She provides ample warmth and food for everybody, and because of the heavy burden that this climate lays on the body, she discourages any form of breaking out of this world of abundance. The Dutch mentality of ‘the strong, lonesome cyclist struggling against the wind’ is unknown here. Here, we find ourselves in a kind of compulsory paradise.
Moreover, the inhabitants of the island of Bali profess a variant of Hinduism, which calls for acceptance of one’s circumstances. According to the Hindu view, it is all karma, the Self is an illusion and no consciousness exists apart from the Great Consciousness.
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