What makes a person a Balinese? Answering this question will need a closer look on the characteristics of the Balinese. With no further ado, I present you, the Balinese.

Balinese are bound by their family, local banjar (community), their desa (consists of a few banjar), various temple organizations, rice growing groups, a multitude of special interest groups, and even the ancestors. Balinese are not independent people, they are connected to various social and religious organizations; and these connections define who they are. It is not just that Balinese are influenced by their connections, but that they form a part of the Balinese. A Balinese is composed of all his relations. There is even a saying that when someone marries a Balinese man, she not just marries her Balinese lover but also marry his whole family and community, since she will also help her husband in fulfilling his role in his community, family, desa, temples, etc.

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Memento mori, a Latin phrase that may be freely translated as “Remember that you are mortal,” “Remember you will die,” or “Remember your death”. It names a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose, which is to remind people of their own mortality. Although Balinese culture has no such genre in their art, but the message of memento mori clearly interwoven in all kind of Balinese artistic products even further penetrates to the Balinese daily life.

Balinese philosophy borrows perfectly the gloomy Buddhist philosophy of life and inevitability of death. As Buddhist, Balinese believe all living things are suffering. Life is a suffering. We try so hard to stay alive, enrich ourselves but at the end, all will be swept away by death, an irony of life. As for inevitability of death, the basic principle of rwa bhineda explains everything. Life and death is one, one that is born will surely die. Balinese said that when they are born they bring four treasures: happiness, sadness, sickness, and death.

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Balinese religion, in a broad sense, Hindus, even among the priests, is concrete, action-centered, thoroughly interwoven with the details of everyday life, and touched with little, if any, of the philosophical sophistication or generalized concern of classical Brahmanism or its Buddhist offshoot.

The most important aspect of religion to the Balinese is the performance of five related ritual cycles. These are five yajna, sacrifices, and are derived from ancient brahmanic theology. They are dewa yajna, sacrifices to the gods, which are made in the temples; buta yajna, sacrifices to the negative or demonic powers or “elements”; manusa yajna, rites of passage; pitra yajna, offerings to the dead; and rsi yajna, consecration of priests.

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