Ayurveda: an Introduction
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The Blogs on Ayurveda have been contributed by Dr. Nikhil Mehta. In case you would want to contribute to Bandra Blogs please feel free to write to us.
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Ayurveda - an Introduction
Ayurveda is something to do with experience. We have narrowed it down to herbs and medicines but it has much wider horizon. The word Ayu means the life and veda means knowledge come out of experience. So Ayurveda means experiential knowledge about life. In other words it is the wisdom about what is good and what is bad, what is beneficial and what is not to our life. So everything, every thought, every action responsible to maintain our life comes under the domain of Ayurveda.
Maintaining life means balancing our physical, mental, social and of course spiritual health. Our miraculous body and mind has the strength to maintain and balance our health. It is not necessary to run to a doctor for every little thing. We need to understand ourselves and know what is good and what is bad for us. If we realize the imbalance inside us at the earliest and know the ways to rebalance it, we will become independent about most of our health problems. This exactly is Ayurveda, the experience about the life.
It is the experience of ancient sages, ancient scientists, it is the knowledge and wisdom of ancient sages compiled together and is available for us to guide our health. And any common man can learn, can take advantage of this wisdom. It is not a monopoly of particular class or a particular group such as doctors. Rather every one must learn to be responsible for his own health, how doctor can take care of our health every now and then.
Let me make it simple - Any person a doctor or a common man eats his food with lots of spices like black paper, red chilies etc. What will happen? What will they experience? Naturally they both will feel hot within, they may feel sweating at their forehead and they may need extra water to balance this heat within. It is an experience. And it is not monopoly of the doctor, any person can also experience the same feelings.
The point I am trying to make is that any one can experience the day to day happenings. Every action we perform is an experience. Sleeping early, sleeping late, eating less, eating more, exposure to sun, exposure to wind, exposure to air conditioning, eating sweet, eating heavy or light, spicy or sour, drinking less or more water, every action is a experience. This will affect your body and you may feel something because of it. The feeling may vary from person to person rather we say the effect may vary from person to person.
Let me simplify it even further. Let us take the earlier example of the Doctor and the common man eating red chilies. We have come to conclusion that both can experience the feelings generated due to eating chilly. Now let us assume that any two persons are eating chilies. Both are feeling the warmth due to it. But one person becomes restless, uneasy and other becomes more comfortable after that. Why so? What went wrong?
Actually nothing went wrong. Now we are learning a more subtle ayurveda, more subtle truth. Earlier was the generalized experience, generalized truth, generalized law of nature that anything hot such as a red chilly or black paper will generate heat inside the bodies and that heat will give rise to certain feelings, certain signs within.
The later was more individual, more personal experience. Yes, due to red chilly, heat was generated inside the body of both, but for one it was troublesome and for other it was beneficial. Now comes an individual variation. The first one may be having already heated up body, so this additional heat was not needed by this body, rather that created imbalance and he became restless. The other person may be having the cold body, so this additional heat was needed by the body, rather that created balance and he became comfortable.
In simple words,
1. Any human being has a capacity to experience.
2. There are so many object, things, action which can create such experiences in us. E.g. bodily action, as talking, walking, sleeping etc or eatables as food, drink, medicine etc or object like wind, sun, water etc and lastly the emotion’s such as anger, fear, jealousy, compassion, forgiveness etc.
3. In general they create a same effect in an individual, a generalized effect. A red chilly will not create a heat in one person and coldness in another. The cold water will not create a cold feeling in one and heat in another.
4. Lastly these effects may be beneficial to one and harmful to other. An individual variation.
At this stage a question may come in your mind. What this is it all about ? My dear friend, it is ayurveda. You, as a person should develop an art, an art to know what is good and what is bad for you, how much is good and bad for you?
Once you start mastering this art. You can keep control of your health. You can balance your health. Slowly you will realize that most of the time you are responsible for your ill health. Your actions are the cause of your ill health and you can control its happening to certain extend. And I can also put it a step further that how a doctor, how someone else is responsible for your ill health.
That is why one must learn the art of remaining healthy, remaining balance. And for that knowledge from a experience, your own experience is important. I will give one example(in the next article), how experience helps us to remain healthy and then a home work for you, an exercise for you.
To be Continued….
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