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| 1964.1 | | TNPUBS::PAINTER | Planet Crayon | Fri Jun 17 1994 15:34 | 5 |
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See topic 1583.* for discussion on Dr. Deepak Chopra, the TM and
TM/Ayurveda organizations, the Maharishi, and the AMA.
Cindy
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| 1964.2 | | TNPUBS::PAINTER | Planet Crayon | Fri Jun 17 1994 18:54 | 63 |
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From: "From The River Of Heaven - Hindu and Vedic Knowledge for the
Modern Age", by David Frawley
Chapter 3 - Nature's Medicine: Ayurveda
Ayurveda is the knowledge or science, veda, of life or longevity, ayur. It is
the medical aspect of Vedic science and regarded as an Upaveda, or secondary
Vedic system. Today it is perhaps the most commonly known of the Vedic
sciences. In the Vedic and Yogic system, health is seen as a basis for
creative and spiritual growth, not as an end in itself. The goal of
life is not just to live but to find the meaning of life. Hence, we
should use the time and energy our health provides for developing our
higher nature. Thus Ayurveda naturally leads to the other and deeper
aspects of Vedic knowledge.
Ayurveda is an aspect of Yoga and is most allied with Hatha Yoga, the
Yoga of the physical body, with which it can be combined. While Hatha
Yoga provides us the exercises for physical health, flexibility and the
dissolution of tension, Ayurveda gives the knowledge of how to care for
our body in terms of diet and medicine. Both serve as means of
harmonizing the physical body so that the powers of our inner
consciousness can come into action through it. While the body is not
the goal of the spiritual or creative life, it is the foundation.
Without health we cannot do anything in life. Hence, Ayurveda is of
importance to all.
Ayurveda is the medicine of nature, the medicine of life. It does not
give us a set of theoretical principles to impose upon our biological
functioning. Rather it seeks to present to the human mind the
principles and powers of Nature herself. It teaches us to put into
practice Nature's great principles of health and natural living. For
this reason it employs the language of nature; an energetic system of
the elements and biological humors, a simple yet profound system of
correspondences, not a complex scientific, materialistic or biochemical
terminology.
It considers that it is more important to know what aspect of nature is
working with us; for example, if there is too much or too little heat in
our system, rather than to be able to describe this dysfunction in terms
of pathogens or biochemical malfunctions. Its terms, therefore, the
biological humors, the elements and their qualities, do not originate
from conceptual thought or scientific experiments but through direct
observation of Nature herself. They represent the powers of Nature
working within us, the great Gods or cosmic powers of the vital or
life-plane to whom we must do homage (i.e., respect and follow their
laws). Just as we have the powers of water, fire, and wind working in
the environment around us, they work on a biological level within us.
Just as allowing a fire to get too close will burn us externally,
allowing our inner fire to burn too highly will damage our internal
organs.
Ayurveda is a form of naturalistic medicine or naturopathy. According
to its wisdom it is Nature herself that heals. All we can do is assist
in her process by attuning ourselves to her movements. Therefore,
Ayurveda emphasizes the balancing of the life-force within us as the
basis of all treatment. Ayurveda is based on diet and herbs for its
treatment but uses many specially prepared mineral substances as well.
It provides us with a complete life-regime through an integrated science
of life-style counseling that deals with the body and mind, and with
both the individual and society. Its goal is not to suppress our
symptoms but to give us the tools to understand our nature and live in
harmony with it.
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| 1964.3 | | TNPUBS::PAINTER | Planet Crayon | Mon Jun 20 1994 11:53 | 48 |
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From: "From The River Of Heaven - Hindu and Vedic Knowledge for the
Modern Age", by David Frawley
Chapter 3 - Nature's Medicine: Ayurveda
Self-Healing
For this reason, Ayurveda is primarily a system of self-healing. It
tells us that what we do for ourselves is more important in correcting
our condition than what others may do for us. As the responsibility for
creating our condition comes from us, so too must be the responsibility
for rectifying it.
Ayurveda states that how we live everyday is more significant in
determining our health than what we do once in a while. An occasional
visit to a doctor or health spa to improve our health cannot correct the
effects of a long term wrong diet or stressful living. What we eat
everyday is more important than what pill or vitamin we take once in a
while to compensate for it.
According to Ayurveda, we cannot expect to get well through natural
healing methods if our lives themselves are out of harmony with Nature.
For this reason, it cannot be used as a palliative measure to maintain
our artificial and stressful life-styles. Ayurveda may not help us to
continue on as we may have been, but may insist upon a real change in
our manner of living if we really wish to get well.
As a spiritually based medicine, it tells us that psychological and
spiritual factors usually outweigh physical factors in causing diseases.
Hence even if we follow the right physical regimes, if our emotions are
disturbed or if we have no real spiritual purpose in life, we cannot
expect to truly heal. We cannot cure the body apart from the mind, or
the mind apart from the soul. To treat disease only on a physical level
deals with the effects, not the causes, and cannot address the major
part of the problem.
We cannot cheat Nature or fool life. Short cuts, easy fixes, quick
cures, wishful thinking, magic remedies and panaceas are not part of
Ayurveda. Life demands tremendous integrity, self-discipline, and
self-awareness to take us beyond disease and sorrow. Ayurveda may not
make things easier for us in the short term but in the long run it
allows us to open up to the real energy of the cosmic life within us and
to assume responsibility for our own existence. There is magic in
Ayurveda, but it is the magic of consciousness and moment by moment
right action. Its magic is not that it takes us off the hook by solving
our problems for us but that it gives us the right tools to effectively
and finally dissolve them.
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| 1964.4 | | TNPUBS::PAINTER | Planet Crayon | Tue Jun 21 1994 16:54 | 56 |
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From: "From The River Of Heaven - Hindu and Vedic Knowledge for the
Modern Age", by David Frawley
Chapter 3 - Nature's Medicine: Ayurveda
Active and Passive Therapies
There are two forms of therapies: what could be called active and
passive. A passive therapy is what someone else does to us. An active
therapy is what we participate in or do for ourselves. Active therapies
are always stronger than passive ones. Passive therapies may be
necessary in acute conditions but they cannot of themselves bring about
real change.
Our culture itself is excessively passive. We are largely spectators
observing others perform. We let others live our lives, and we in turn
watch them on the sidelines or in front of the screen. Our lives have
very little direct experience or creative involvement, which according
to Yoga is the only really liberating or fulfilling factor in life. We
let other people tell us what to do, how to think, who we are, where to
go, what to buy. We let others fix our food, entertain us, tell us how
to make love, tell us what God is and so on. In the same way we let the
medical establishment run our health. We follow the idea of health
which others give us, not what we experience for ourselves or discover
to be true and effective in our own lives. If we become victims of this
process there is no one to blame for ourselves. Just as no one can
breathe for us, no one can make us healthy or happy.
Ayurveda holds that there is no real healer, no magical doctor or
magical pill. The magic is in us, in arousing our own life-force and
connecting with our own soul, the source of life. No machine can give
us life, nor can mechanical tests really measure the life-force within
us which is the true measure of our health. Medical diagnoses may be
more harmful than helpful if they do not acknowledge the ability of the
life-force to overcome all diseases. The diagnosis of cancer, for
example, often tends to destroy the life will in the patient and thereby
prevents any cure from taking place.
No substance we take from the outside can be anything more than a
catalyst. We, each of us individually, have to learn what our nature
really is and through it how to live in harmony with the cosmic life.
No one can do this for us, and as long as we are unwilling to do so we
must contract disease. For this reason Ayurveda is a constitutional or
individually oriented medicine. It has no form of mass treatment or
mass diagnosis. It is opposed to all standardized medicine. It says
that each individual is different, and even if their diseases are
apparently the same, we still cannot treat them in the same way.
Those looking for mere comfort or for someone to make them healthy
without their own effort may find Ayurveda limited or unhelpful. But it
is the most honest form of medicine and the one which does not take
power over us. If we begin to apply its tools in our own lives, we will
get great results but only if we do so in harmony with Nature and
through the course of time with the appropriate adjustments to the
rhythms of life.
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| 1964.5 | | TNPUBS::PAINTER | Planet Crayon | Tue Jun 21 1994 19:36 | 65 |
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From: "From The River Of Heaven - Hindu and Vedic Knowledge for the
Modern Age", by David Frawley
Chapter 3 - Nature's Medicine: Ayurveda
The Background of Ayurveda
Ayurveda has its complex clinical methods including surgery and the use
of strong medications. These, however, are secondary to its primary
self-healing approach. Its eight branches are: internal medicine
(kayachikitsa), surgery (shalyatantra), diseases of the head
(shalakayatantra), pediatrics (kaumarabhritya), toxocology
(agadatantra), psychiatry (bhutavidya), rejuvenation (rasayana) and
revitalization (vajikarana).
Ayurveda, as typical of the Vedic sciences, is applied differently by
its various practitioners as it also emphasizes creative intelligence,
not a standardized approach. It does not present us with just one way
of looking at health or disease but gives us a whole spectrum in harmony
with the vastness of life. Hence, it cannot be understood from a purely
scientific, intellectual, or materialistic perspective.
Ayurveda is based upon the spiritual and psychological background of
Yoga, Sankhya and Vedanta. From these come its methods for healing the
mind. It holds that diseases are of two causes; either owing to
imbalances of energies in the body itself or owing to karmic, that is
psychological causes. The latter are thought to predominate over the
former, though both factors are present in most diseases.
The three main classical texts for Ayurveda are 'Charak', 'Sushrut', and
'Vagbhat'. While they are still studied today and give the fundamental
principles, much of their material is no longer relevant, so many modern
books have been written to adapt them to changing conditions. While the
form we find in these texts today was not finalized until the early
centuries A.D., 'Charak' and 'Sushrut' are about the same time as
Krishna (c. 1500-1000 B.C.). Many Ayurvedic practices are also
mentioned in Buddhist teachings and in the stories of the Buddha
himself. Ayurveda was adapted by the Buddhists and is the basis of
Buddhist medicine. Vagbhat himself was a Buddhist, and his text and
commentaries on it are still commonly studied in Buddhist medicine.
Nagarjuna, the most famous of the Buddhist siddhas, and perhaps the most
renowned figure in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition after the Buddha, was
a great Ayurvedic doctor. From him originate many of the special
mineral or alchemical preparations (rasas) still prepared and used in
India today. Tibetan medicine thus is also predominately Ayurvedic with
a mixture of Chinese influence.
The older Greek medicine used in Europe until the seventeenth century
and still used in Islamic countries and by the Muslims in India (called
Unnani medicine) is very similar to Ayurveda. It employs a four humor
rather than a three humor model. In India, Ayurvedic and Unnani forms
of medicine are commonly practiced together. Hence, Ayurvedic knowledge
has had a broad application and remains relevant to the main natural
healing traditions in the world.
Ayurveda in its origins is an integral part of the most ancient 'Rig
Veda'. The three main Vedic Gods, Indra, Agni and Soma, relate to the
three Doshas or biological humors of Ayurveda as Vata (air), Pitta
(fire), and Kapha (water). Indra has the energy of air and the
life-force and is often equated with it as Vata or Vayu. Agni is the
essential energy of fire and Soma, the essential energy of water. The
Vedic chants provide the sound vibrations which balance the three humors
in the body and open up their subtle potentials in the mind. From them
a complete mantra therapy for disease can be derived.
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| 1964.6 | | TNPUBS::PAINTER | Planet Crayon | Wed Jun 22 1994 12:15 | 59 |
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From: "From The River Of Heaven - Hindu and Vedic Knowledge for the
Modern Age", by David Frawley
Chapter 3 - Nature's Medicine: Ayurveda
The Biological Humors - the Three Doshas
According to Ayurveda, the human body is ruled by three fundamental
life-forces: Vata, Pitta and Kapha. These are often translated as wind,
bile, and phlegm. Vata is also often called the biological air-humor,
Pitta the biological fire-humor and Kapha the biological water-humor.
The humors are called Doshas in Sanskrit, meaning what spoils or causes
decay, as they are not only the forces which produce and sustain the
body in their normal condition but those which, when out of balance,
serve to destroy it. Death is inherent in life. Even our normal
process of metabolism is not only growing new cells but causing old
cells to die and be discarded. Growth and life must eventually turn
into decay and death. Health in the body thus consists in the right
balance of the creative and destructive forces of the Doshas.
Each of the biological humors is composed of two elements; the first
which provides for its primary force, the second which gives a medium
for its manifestation. Vata consists of air and ether; air is its
active side and ether or space its medium or field of movement. Pitta
consists of fire and water; fire is its active side, water or oil is its
field of combustion as fire cannot exist directly in the body without
destroying it. Kapha consists of water and earth' water is its active
force and earth its container.
Yet the biological humors are not the same as the elements. They are
forms of the life-force working through and animating the elements.
They are different aspects of the soul. The elements in themselves are
inanimate. They are never really alive but can be activated by the
biological humors, like a wire is by an electric current. This life
force is reflected from the soul, our eternal being, upon the physical
body by the lens of the mind. Hence, embodied life is always temporary.
What comes from the inanimate elements and is formed of them must return
to them. Similarly, the life-force which comes from the eternal must
eventually return to it. The current of life eventually must wear out
the wire of the body. Nevertheless, life still can be prolonged far
beyond its ordinary limits, and Ayurveda gives us many keys to this
process.
Vata is dry, light, cold, rough, subtle and agitated in qualities. It
is the root of the humors, tissues and waste materials of the body. In
its natural state it sustains effort, inhalation, exhalation, movement,
the discharge of impulses, the equilibrium of the tissues and the
coordination of the senses.
Pitta is oily, penetrating, hot, light, unpleasant in odor, mobile and
liquid. It governs digestion, thermogenesis, visual perception, hunger,
thirst, lustre, complexion, understanding, intelligence, courage, and
softness of the body.
Kapha is wet, cold, heavy, slow, sticky, soft and firm and qualities.
It gives stability, lubrication, holding together of the joints and such
qualities as patience, calm and devotion.
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