{"id":19982,"date":"2023-09-10T04:17:04","date_gmt":"2023-09-10T04:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/?p=19982"},"modified":"2023-09-10T04:17:04","modified_gmt":"2023-09-10T04:17:04","slug":"balis-unusual-sacred-cloth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2023\/09\/10\/balis-unusual-sacred-cloth\/","title":{"rendered":"Bali&#8217;s Unusual Sacred Cloth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>BALI, INDONESIA, September 6, 2023 (printmag.com, by Ellen Shapiro): If your eyes are open in Bali, Indonesia, you\u2019ll see black and white checked fabric just about everywhere. On my first vacation there with my son and his family, I spotted it at a roadside pottery shop on the way from the airport. What is this doing here? I asked myself. After all, in the USA, we associate gingham with rustic decorating, coverlets for jam jars, clothes for small children, and great-grandma\u2019s tablecloth.<br><br>It didn\u2019t take long to start noticing black and white checks wherever I went. But the Insight Guide I\u2019d studied and brought along gave me no insight. After four more extended visits\u2014my son\u2019s family now lives there\u2014I\u2019m beginning to understand its religious and cultural significance. Frien<br><br>Bali could be the only national entity with a trademark textile design. Unlike America\u2019s patriotic stars and stripes, the black and white checks have a deep spiritual meaning. They symbolize the Balinese philosophy of Rwa Bhineda, balance and harmony, not unlike Chinese yin and yang. The contrasting squares signify that there is no day without night, no joy without sorrow, no good without bad, no right without wrong, no order without chaos.<br><br>Much more on this interesting tradition at source:<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.printmag.com\/design-destinations\/in-bali-checked-gingham-has-a-spiritual-meaning\/\n\">https:\/\/www.printmag.com\/design-destinations\/in-bali-checked-gingham-has-a-spiritual-meaning\/<br><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BALI, INDONESIA, September 6, 2023 (printmag.com, by Ellen Shapiro): If your eyes are open in Bali, Indonesia, you\u2019ll see black,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19982"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19987,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19982\/revisions\/19987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}