"The temple was newly built in 2007 and ever since has become an important center for local and international Buddhist community activities in Bali. The temple is open to every Buddhist and everyone for meditation, ceremonies, or spiritual teaching, with several monks from all different Buddhist tradition coming to give teaching at the temple."
Their website, Bali Buddhist dot org leads with The Bali Buddhist Community and lists Vihara Buddha Dharma as their temple. Vihara is what they call Buddhist temples here. The image here is from the About Us page where there are two more,
Really sweet guy in the office we talked to yesterday arranged for us to meet today with the head priest, a Chinese Balinese in the Thai Theravada tradition - Romo Handy. Romo is father in Javanese. Handy? Must inquire further about that. Guess it's a first name. We were most pleased with him. Street clothes, no aires. Nice guy. I mentioned to him that we'd been living together for over eleven years. He said as Buddhists it's not necessary to have the ritual of marriage as long as you're true to each other in your hearts. That surprised us.
They asked if a forty minute ceremony was too long and Katrinka suggested thirty. No problem. She said we don't need to write our own vows and I put my palms together in relieved thanks. He's emailing the text to us. It's in Pali and English.
He asked if we wanted to register with the government and he seemed a bit surprised when we said yes but we're living here and have to deal with the government as a couple so we do want that. One pleasant thing we learned then was that they'll take care of getting us registered with the government which eliminates a lot of hassle. They said a government representative will come to the wedding and we'll make it official with them and pay on the spot. Adds some to the cost but not so much. About $230 for the temple and half that for the government. We're meeting again on Wednesday to get paperwork and details nailed down. We'll need seven small photos of both of us together. Do that cheaply and quickly at the same place down the street we get passport photos. Photocopies of our birth certificates and passports and of the passports of our witnesses (best woman and man), our friend Alice (from Marin) and her mate Danu (from Java).
Romo agreed to come to Sindu Beach near where we live to do the ceremony at five pm on July 10th - the day after I come back from the ten day Vipassana retreat in Singaraja. This is coming together nicely - thanks to them and mainly Katrinka. - dc
