Galungan and the Victory of Dharma

How Bali celebrates righteousness winning over darkness

On November 19th, 2025, every street in Ubud will arch with penjor— curved bamboo poles decorated with coconut leaves, fruits, and flowers, bending under their own beauty like nature's cathedral. This is Galungan, when Bali celebrates the victory of dharma (righteousness) over adharma (unrighteousness).

But in Balinese Hinduism, this isn't a story of good defeating evil once and for all. It's something far more nuanced—and far more useful for those of us trying to live aligned with our purpose.

Rwa Bhineda: The Dance of Opposites

The Balinese understand dharma through the lens of rwa bhineda—the concept that opposing forces aren't enemies, but dance partners. Light and dark. Order and chaos. Dharma and adharma.

They don't exist in separate territories. They exist together, creating balance through their tension. Like the black and white checkered cloth (saput poleng) wrapped around sacred trees and statues throughout Bali—both forces present, both necessary, both creating wholeness together.

Galungan doesn't celebrate the elimination of adharma. It celebrates dharma gaining the upper hand in this eternal dance. For ten days, from November 19th to Kuningan on November 29th, the island tips toward righteousness, devotion, and sacred living.

The Ancestral Return

Balinese tradition teaches that on Galungan, ancestral spirits descend from heaven to visit their descendants. Every family temple overflows with elaborate offerings. Women spend days creating intricate canang sari and ceremonial foods. Men construct the towering penjor that transform ordinary streets into sacred processional routes.

This isn't just honoring the past. It's recognizing that your dharma—your righteous path—doesn't belong to you alone. It's woven from the threads of everyone who came before you. Their struggles, their wisdom, their choices all contributed to the path you walk now.

The Balinese don't ask "What do I want to do with my life?" They ask "What does my family, my community, my lineage need me to become?" Dharma is always relational, never purely individual.

What Victory Actually Means

Here's what makes Galungan profound: dharma's victory isn't permanent. It's cyclical.

Every 210 days in the Balinese calendar, Galungan returns. Because adharma always returns too. Greed creeps back in. Disconnection from the sacred happens again. The balance tips away from righteousness.

The Balinese don't see this as failure. They see it as the natural rhythm of existence. The work of dharma isn't to win once and rest. It's to choose righteousness again and again, celebration after celebration, generation after generation.

This is what living your dharma actually looks like—not a single moment of clarity that solves everything, but a continuous recommitment to what you know is true.

The Ten-Day Practice of Alignment

From Galungan to Kuningan, Balinese families engage in intensive dharmic practice:

Morning, noon, and evening offerings to maintain connection with the sacred Temple visits to honor community and lineage Family gatherings to strengthen the bonds that hold everything together Creating the most beautiful penjor— and yes, there's friendly competition between neighbors about whose is most magnificent Slowing down from ordinary work to remember what actually matters

It's essentially a ten-day intensive in choosing dharma over adharma in every moment— through both grand devotional gestures and quiet daily practice.

Kuningan: Bringing It Home

On November 29th, Kuningan marks the ancestors' return to heaven. The penjor come down. The intensive ceremonial period ends. Life returns to "normal."

But normal is different now.

The ten days leave a residue. The family connections have deepened. The spiritual commitments have strengthened. The clarity about priorities has sharpened.

Kuningan teaches that dharma doesn't live only in ceremony and intensity. It lives in how you show up on a regular Tuesday. In your work. In your relationships. In the mundane moments that actually compose most of life.

The Balinese bring the consciousness of Galungan into the ordinary—which is perhaps the most advanced dharmic practice of all.

Witnessing Dharma in Action

If you're in Ubud during mid-November, you'll witness something rare: an entire society collectively choosing dharma. Streets filled with families in ceremonial dress. Air thick with incense. Gamelan music seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere.

The penjor arching overhead, each one a family's offering, each one competing to be the most beautiful expression of devotion. Children in traditional dress following their parents to temple. Grandmothers teaching granddaughters how to create offerings the same way they were taught decades before.

You'll see a culture that hasn't separated the spiritual from the daily. For the Balinese, they're the same thing.

And for ten days, the entire island tips toward righteousness. Not because adharma has disappeared, but because the community has collectively chosen to celebrate dharma's victory in this moment, knowing it will need to be chosen again in 210 days.

This is rwa bhineda in action: the eternal dance of opposites, with dharma taking the lead for a precious, temporary, worth-celebrating moment.