Balinese Hinduism understands the natural world not as a neutral backdrop but as a sacred, living matrix in which gods, ancestors, humans, and spirits are continuously interacting. This vision is articulated most clearly in the principle of Tri Hita Karana, which teaches that genuine well-being arises from harmonious relations with the divine (Parhyangan), with fellow humans (Pawongan), and with the environment (Palemahan). Mountains, forests, rivers, and the sea are thus not merely physical features; they are zones of presence, often regarded as the abodes of deities, ancestors, or powerful spirits. The island’s spatial orientation along the mountain–sea axis (kaja–kelod) reflects this sacred geography, with highlands associated with the realm of gods and ancestors and the lowlands and sea linked to forces of purification and more ambivalent powers. Villages and temple layouts are aligned with these directions, so that everyday life unfolds within a ritually ordered landscape.

This sacralization of space is matched by a sacralization of the elements that sustain life, especially water and rice. The Subak system of irrigation, organized around water temples and priestly leadership, treats water as tirtha, holy substance that must be distributed fairly and ritually purified. Agricultural cycles—planting, tending, and harvesting—are accompanied by ceremonies and offerings to deities such as Dewi Sri, the rice and fertility goddess, and to the spirits believed to guard fields, canals, and granaries. In this way, ecological processes and religious observances are woven together, so that caring for the land and sharing water justly become acts of devotion as much as acts of survival.

Ritual life extends this reverence for nature into the smallest details of daily practice. Offerings made from flowers, leaves, rice, fruit, and incense are placed not only on household and village shrines but also at boundary stones, crossroads, large trees, rivers, and even on the ground for unseen beings. Certain days are dedicated specifically to honoring animals and plants, blessing livestock and vegetation as partners in the shared web of existence. Sacred groves, temple forests, particular trees, and springs are protected through religious taboo, which discourages cutting, polluting, or otherwise disturbing them by associating such acts with spiritual danger and social misfortune. Rituals of purification at rivers, springs, lakes, and the sea acknowledge both the power of nature to cleanse and the responsibility to avoid defiling what is held to be holy.

Through these interlocking beliefs and practices, the environment is experienced as a network of relationships that are at once ecological and spiritual. Nature spirits (bhuta-kala) and other unseen beings are understood to inhabit the same spaces humans occupy, requiring ongoing offerings and ceremonies to maintain balance. Festivals such as the Day of Silence, during which activity on the island comes to a halt, symbolically allow the earth and its inhabitants a period of rest and recalibration. Environmental care, therefore, is not framed as an optional ethical add-on but as an intrinsic religious duty, a continual effort to sustain harmony among gods, humans, and the wider living world.