For thousands of years, Balinese hold a strong belief the spiritual power of the nature
associated with their daily life, including the organisation of water irrigation system for the
rice terraces. John Stephen Lansing (1995), an Anthropologist who studies agricultural
practices in Bali, discovered how strong the cosmology of Balinese life influences the
cropping patterns of farming districts. From Lansing’s extensive research about Balinese
culture, he realised that the importance of the cosmological beliefs integrates with Balinese
water temples in managing water resources to the rice terraces is not apparent to
development planners and this could have been considered. He found that the temples are
instrumental in aiding agricultural productivity as well as religious markers to Balinese.
The effectiveness of rice production certainly matters to Balinese rice farmers because the
poor result may affect their supply. This essay analyses the relationship between Balinese
cosmology and the ecological system of rice terraces.
In Balinese cosmology, rice farmers strongly believe that the Goddess of the Crater Lake,
Dewi Danu brings life to the rice terraces (Lansing, 1995). This indeed presents the
cosmology of one’s culture that believing in spirits affects the human world (Lundberg,
2016e). According to Balinese beliefs, the Goddess of the Crater Lake, one of the two
supreme deities of Bali is the ruler of both mountain lake and Mount Batur (Lansing,
1995), in which it relates to animism that the belief of an interrelation between the spiritual
and geographic features such as mountains and rivers (Lundberg, 2016e). This could be
explained that the Crater Lake on top of the Mount Batur, which is believed to be the home
of the Goddess of the Crater Lake serves as the source of irrigation waters. Hence,
Balinese rice farmers believe that the Goddess of the Crater Lake has the power to create
continuous water flowing through underground tunnels from lakes to the rice terraces for
irrigation (Lansing, 1995; Lansing & Miller, 2003). This belief seems make sense to
Balinese rice farmers as they see the waters in lakes never decrease in flowing through
underground tunnels regardless of how many times the waters have been taken by them
(Lansing, 1995). Rather, Balinese rice farmers believe that the Goddess of the Crater Lake
is responsible for the gift of the waters that irrigate their rice fields (Lansing, 1987). It
implies the romanticism that traditional peoples seen it as presenting a better past when
humans were at one with nature (Lundberg, 2016a). However, rice farmers also believe
