MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY INTO THE MEANING OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN THE BALINESE CREATIVE PRACTICE OF WAYANG TANTRI

Religious experience in the creative practice of Wayang Tantri is not an aesthetic product but an existential event that unfolds through the embodiment of the dalang's lived experience. The dalang's creativity emerges from engagement with social, cultural-religious, and everyday horizons of the world. Religiosity appears not as symbolic representation but as a shared mode of inhabiting the world within performance. Through Merleau-Ponty's concept of perceptual faith, religious experience is understood as the immanence of the body in its relation to the world, making Wayang Tantri a site where artistic expression, religious experience, and existence converge.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This study aims to disclose the meaning of religious experience in the creative practice of Wayang Tantri through the phenomenological perspective of Merleau-Ponty. Employing a qualitative approach grounded in library research and hermeneutic analysis, the study demonstrates that the creativity of Wayang Tantri is not merely an aesthetic product, but an existential event unfolding through the embodiment of the dalang’s lived experience. The findings indicate that religious experience is disclosed through the dalang’s engagement with three horizons of the world: the social, the cultural-religious, and everyday experience. Religiosity does not appear as symbolic representation, but as a shared mode of inhabiting the world within the practice of performance. Through the concept of perceptual faith, religious experience is understood as the immanence of the body in its relation to the world. Accordingly, Wayang Tantri emerges as a site where artistic expression, religious experience, and existence converge within a single, interwoven horizon of experience.