Hinduism

"The Ayurvedic route to great health involves two simple steps: 1. Doing less; 2. Being more."

"The great thing about Ayurveda is that its treatments always yield side benefits, not side effects."

"The ancient system of Ayurvedic herbal medicine, dating back to the sixth century BC, has been making a healthy resurgence over the last few decades and nowhere more than in Kerala...The most common form of Ayurveda in Kerala is massage, which uses oils and herbs in a course of treatment, either for rejuvenation or as remedies. Ayurveda which aims to eliminate the toxic imbalances that cause the body to become susceptible to ill-health, concentrates on the well-being of the individual as a whole and not just the affected part."

"The principles of Ayurveda can "help you love them 'as is' instead of how you think they should be."

"A fundamental Ayurvedic philosophy is that “food is medicine and medicine is food” An Ayurvedic proverb is “When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use; when diet is correct, medicine is of no need."

"Dhanvantari, also spelled Dhanwantari, in Hindu mythology, the physician of the gods. According to legend, the gods and the demons sought the elixir amrita by churning the milky ocean, and Dhanvantari rose out of the waters bearing a cup filled with the elixir. The Ayurveda, a traditional system of medicine, is also attributed to him. The name has also been applied to other semilegendary and historical physicians and to a legendary king."

"If your work is tuned in and based on timeless principles like Ayurveda or yoga, don't try to sell your people on something that will only work once. We're all happier when we're working together in harmony with the highest. It's part of all of our paths."

"Ayurveda is not a weird diet and the practitioners are not really tree-hugging woo-woos with an extreme affinity for Mother Nature (they're normal people who take really good care of themselves & their communities). Funny how we make-up expectations & judgments about things before we even try them. – Ayurvedic wisdom leads to more profitable and passionate work."

"The general picture of Indian medicine is one of rapid development in the Vedic and Buddhist periods, followed by centuries of slow and cautious improvement. How much Atreya, Dhanwantari and Sushruta owed to Greece, and how much Greece owed to them, we do not know. In the time of Alexander, says Garrison, “Hindu physicians and surgeons enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for superior knowledge and skill,” and even Aristotle is believed by some students to have been indebted to them. So too with the Persians and the Arabs: it is difficult to say how much Indian medicine owed to the physicians of Baghdad, and through them to the heritage of Babylonian medicine in the Near East; on the one hand certain remedies, like opium and mercury, and some modes of diagnosis, like feeling the pulse, appear to have entered India from Persia; on the other we find Persians and Arabs translating into their languages, in the eighth century A.D., the thousand-year-old compendia of Sushruta and Charaka.51 The great Caliph Haroun-al-Rashid accepted the preeminence of Indian medicine and scholarship, and imported Hindu physicians to organize hospitals and medical schools in Baghdad. Lord Ampthill concludes that medieval and modern Europe owes its system of medicine directly to the Arabs, and through them to India. Probably this noblest and most uncertain of the sciences had an approximately equal antiquity, and developed in contemporary contact and mutual influence, in Sumeria, Egypt and India."

"For the detection of the 1120 diseases that he enumerated, Sushruta recommended diagnosis by inspection, palpation, and auscultation. Taking of the pulse was described in a treatise dating 1300 A.D. Urinalysis was a favorite method of diagnosis; Tibetan physicians were reputed able to cure any patient without having seen anything more of him than his water. In the time of Yuan Chwang Hindu medical treatment began with a seven-day fast; in this interval the patient often recovered; if the illness continued, drugs were at last employed. Even then drugs were used very sparingly; reliance was placed largely upon diet, baths, enemas, inhalations, urethral and vaginal injections, and blood-lettings by leeches or cups. Hindu physicians were especially skilled in concocting antidotes for poisons; they still excel European physicians in curing snakebites. Vaccination, unknown to Europe before the eighteenth century, was known in India as early as 550 A.D., if we may judge from a text attributed to Dhanwantari, one of the earliest Hindu physicians: “Take the fluid of the pock on the udder of the cow . . . upon the point of a lancet, and lance with it the arms between the shoulders and elbows until the blood appears; then, mixing the fluid with the blood, the fever of the small-pox will be produced.” Modern European physicians believe that caste separateness was prescribed because of the Brahman belief in invisible agents transmitting disease; many of the laws of sanitation enjoined by Sushruta and “Manu” seem to take for granted what we moderns, who love new words for old things, call the germ theory of disease. Hypnotism as therapy seems to have originated among the Hindus, who often took their sick to the temples to be cured by hypnotic suggestion or “temple-sleep,” as in Egypt and Greece. The Englishmen who introduced hypnotherapy into England—Braid, Esdaile and Elliotson—“undoubtedly got their ideas, and some of their experience, from contact with India.”"

"Only less illustrious than these are Vagbhata (625 A.D.), who prepared a medical compendium in prose and verse, and Bhava Misra (1550 A.D.), whose voluminous work on anatomy, physiology and medicine mentioned, a hundred years before Harvey, the circulation of the blood..."

"The records of Hindu medicine begin with the Atharva-veda; here, embedded in a mass of magic and incantations, is a list of diseases with their symptoms. Medicine arose as an adjunct to magic: the healer studied and used earthly means of cure to help his spiritual formulas; later he relied more and more upon such secular methods, continuing the magic spell, like our bedside manner, as a psychological aid. Appended to the Atharva-veda is the Ajur-veda (“The Science of Longevity”). In this oldest system of Hindu medicine illness is attributed to disorder in one of the four humors (air, water, phlegm and blood), and treatment is recommended with herbs and charms. Many of its diagnoses and cures are still used in India, with a success that is sometimes the envy of Western physicians. The Rig-veda names over a thousand such herbs, and advocates water as the best cure for most diseases. Even in Vedic times physicians and surgeons were being differentiated from magic doctors, and were living in houses surrounded by gardens in which they cultivated medicinal plants."

"Anatomy and physiology, like some aspects of chemistry, were by-products of Hindu medicine. As far back as the sixth century B.C. Hindu physicians described ligaments, sutures, lymphatics, nerve plexus, fascia, adipose and vascular tissues, mucous and synovial membranes, and many more muscles than any modern cadaver is able to show. The doctors of pre-Christian India shared Aristotle’s mistaken conception of the heart as the seat and organ of consciousness, and supposed that the nerves ascended to and descended from the heart. But they understood remarkably well the processes of digestion—the different functions of the gastric juices, the conversion of chyme into chyle, and of this into blood. Anticipating Weismann by 2400 years, Atreya (ca. 500 B.C.) held that the parental seed is independent of the parent’s body, and contains in itself, in miniature, the whole parental organism. Examination for virility was recommended as a prerequisite for marriage in men; and the Code of Manu warned against marrying mates affected with tuberculosis, epilepsy, leprosy, chronic dyspepsia, piles, or loquacity. Birth control in the latest theological fashion was suggested by the Hindu medical schools of 500 B.C. in the theory that during twelve days of the menstrual cycle impregnation is impossible. Fœtal development was described with considerable accuracy; it was noted that the sex of the fœtus remains for a time undetermined, and it was claimed that in some cases the sex of the embryo could be influenced by food or drugs."

"A physician who has learnt one science only cannot be sure of his own science (Ayurveda) and for this reason the physician has to be versed in many sciences."

"The slow self-manifesting birth of God in Matter is the purpose of the terrestrial Lila."

"Universal self which is beyond the universal modification of ‘Prakriti’ is what is called ‘Ishvara’, the Supreme Ruler, God."

"In Paramatma Sahita, [ Sankara says] that the Supreme Self regards him as His very self. The self in the body is generally absorbed by the world of dualities, cold and heat, pain and pleasure but when it controls the senses and masters the world, the self becomes free when the self is bound by the modes of Prakriti or nature as it is called Kshetragna, when it is freed from them, the same self is called the Supreme Self."

"Though the physical world and the individual souls are real they are not independent of the supreme. They are para-tantra, while God alone is sva-tantra. Prakriti, Purusa, Kala,Karma, Svabhava are dependent. Though eternal they do not exist by their own right but by the will of the Supreme."

"Know therefore that Prakriti is maya and the controlled of maya is the Supreme Lord. All this world with all its beings are but parts of Him."

"The most perplexing of Samkhya system is the problem of relation between Purusa and Prakriti. Prakriti evolves a world full of woe and desolation to raise the soul from its slumber. The unrolling of the tragedy of the world is said to be necessary for the self, which remains inactive though it sees all that is presented to it...The evolution of Prakriti implies spiritual agency. But the spiritual centers admitted by Samkhya are incapable of exerting any direct influence on Prakriti; the Samkhya says that the mere presence of Purusas excited Prakriti to activity and development. Though Purusa is not endowed with creative might, Prakriti, which produces the manifold universe, is so on account of its union with Purusa. Prakriti is blind, but with the guidance of Purusa it produces the manifold universe. The union of the two is compared to a lame man of good vision mounted on the shoulders of a blind man of sure foot."

"Prakriti is the fundamental substance out of which the world evolves...Parkriti evolves under the influence of Purusa"

"The noun lila means anything from sport, dalliance, play to any languid or amorous gesture in a woman."

"The Samkhya system is associated with the name of the ancient sage Kapila. The basic contention of Samkhya is that the world evolves out of Prakriti through the interplay of gunas. Prakriti is constituted by three gunas – Sattva, Rejas and Tamas. Sattva is the quality of serenity or repose. Rajas stands for activity or movement. Tamas is inertia."

"...if we ask the Sankhya the question, "Who created nature?" — the Sankhya says that the Purusha and the Prakriti are uncreate and omnipresent, and that of this Purusha there is an infinite number. We shall have to controvert these propositions, and find a better solution, and by so doing we shall come to Advaitism."

"The Chit in the Purusha plus Prakriti is what we see around us. Whatever is pleasure and happiness and light in the universe belongs to Purusha; but it is a compound, because it is Purusha plus Prakriti."

"Prakriti is called by the Sânkhya philosophers indiscreet, and defined as the perfect balance of the materials in it; and it naturally follows that in perfect balance there cannot be any motion. In the primal state before any manifestation, when there was no motion but perfect balance, this Prakriti was indestructible, because decomposition or death comes from instability or change."

"In Samkhya, since atman (Purusa) is pure consciousness, which cannot be defined further, and Prakrti is responsible for the creation of the empirical world, Purusa is regarded as essentially inactive. But, while in Advaita, the multitude of souls (of course, the karmic chain of transmigration might hold together one and the same soul but they are supposed to be innumerable chains representing different souls) is only valid on the empirical, lower stage of reality."

"One should understand that the Atman is always like the King, distinct from the body, senses, mind and intellect, all of which constitute the matter (Prakriti); and is the witness of their functions."

"Prakriti is the source of the five great elements earth, water, fire, air, and ether known as Panchamahabhutas. These five great elements comprise all material objects and the bodies of plants, trees, insects, animals, and human beings. All beings in the world are the products of the union of atman (or Purusha of Sankhya philosophy) and Prakriti."

"In Prakriti and Gunas, the concept of prakriti is used in Sankhya philosophy to explain the evolution of the universe. Prakriti is defined as the ultimate unconscious primal matter or the ultimate cosmic energy, the material cause of the universe."

"Gandhi's understanding of 'nature' was a far more inclusive one, rooted in the Gujarati word Prakruti, which derived from the Sanskrit Prakriti, meaning ‘ the original or natural form or condition of anything, original or primary substance’, and ‘the personified will of the Supreme in creation...For Gandhi, the power of Prakriti made a mockery of even the most advanced technology of the day."

"Perform all work carefully, guided by compassion. All actions are performed by the gunas of Prakriti. Deluded by identification with the ego, a person thinks, “I am the doer.” But the illumined man or woman understands the domain of the gunas and is not attached. Such people know that the gunas interact with each other; they do not claim to be the doer."

"But in deep-sleep when temporarily our minds are not effective in our selves, all these tyrannies are at an end....from the body, senses, mind and intellect, all of which constitute the matter (Prakriti), and is only the witness of their functions."

"The Devi-Bhagavata, expounding the sakta perspective, explicitly rejects the Samkhyan view of matter, prakriti."

"Vishnu is said to be beyond purusa and prakriti or to include both. … prakriti, like maya and shakti, in the Bhagavata, is something Vishnu possesses and controls. With prakriti becoming a goddess, or even identified with the Goddess, Devi, the old Samkhyan dualism, between a conscious spirit-person and an active but insentient material force was basically transcended “from the ground up.” P.30"

"The Samkya philosophers say that of the two principles, Purusa and Prakriti, it is Prakriti, the creatrix of the world, that is devoid of consciousness (caitanya)."

"The spirit, universal nature (whether called Maya, Prakriti or Shakti) and the soul in living beings, Jiva, are the three truths which are universally admitted by all religious sects and conflicting religious philosophies of India."

"The concept of Prakriti and Maya fail to explain the Bliss aspect of the Divine."

"The thought of the Gita is not pure Monism although it sees in one unchanging, pure, eternal Self, the foundation of all cosmic existence , nor Mayavada, although it speaks of the Maya of the three modes of Prakriti omnipresent in the created world; nor is it Qualified Monism although it places in the One his eternal supreme Prakriti manifested in the form of Jiva and lays most stress on dwelling in cold and heat, in God rather than in dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness; nor is it Sankhya, although it explains the created world by the double principle of Purusha and Prakriti."

"For all this diversity, the core of East Indian spirituality is Hinduism, especially as disclosed in the notion of leela (also spelled lila), or play. The entire cosmos is a leela, a dance of energy, a drama staged by Brahman, the Absolute. Leelas are also specific celebrations."

"Lila (pronounced Leela) is the play of creation. To awakened consciousness, the entire universe. With all its joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains, appears as a divine game, sport, or drama. It is a play in which the one Consciousness performs all the roles. Alluding to this lila of the Divine Mother the physical universe is a “mansion of mirth.”"

"The expansion (i.e. projection) and the contraction (i.e. dissolution) of the universe are called lila (the divine sport) in Hindu scriptures. In this divine play, the One becomes many and the many return into the One in endless rhythmic fashion."

"This creative activity of the Divine is called lila, the play of God, and the world is seen as the stage of the divine play."

"Clearly not reserved strictly for the spiritual, lila is nevertheless employed as a justification for the mystery of existence in various Indian religions. Depending on the spiritual system claiming the term, lila denotes a specific Divine Play whose nature corresponds to the fundamental epistemological and spiritual beliefs of the tradition in question. Thus the tenor of the definition of lila provides a unique vantage point for any spiritual tradition that utilizes the term."

"Lila, as a concept denoting play, is applied to much of Indian thought, both spiritual and secular."

"The Ram Lila at Ramnagar, the fort that is home to the kings of Benares, is the most famous and traditional of all these Ram Lilas. The Ramnagar Ram Lila began because of the royal family's patronage, and the annual performance is still the oldest, most traditional and most important Ram Lila in Benares."

"Maya and Lila answer the questions ‘how’ and ‘why’ with regard to the world. To the question ‘why’ creation? The answer is ‘Lila’ and to the question ‘How creation’ the answer is through Maya. Although these apparently look alike Vedantic answers to these questions, Sri Aurobindoconceives them not exactly in the Vedanta’s way but in his own way."

"...to be vigorously and devotedly involved in the Ramlila for one month is to take an excursion out of ordinary space and time. The Ramcharitmanas, along with mainstream devotional Hinduism, teaches that the universe is lila, or play, which in Sanskrit as in English means both “drama” and “game.” The idea of lila is closely akin to that of maya, which we may say here refers to the transient and illusory world of forms. I believe that the Ramlila is constructed in such a way as to produce an actual experience of the world as lila or maya."

"Therefore, it is that Hinduism calls it all His sport — Lila, or calls it an illusion— Maya."

"Popular traditions in Benaras, [however], tend to associate with entire month of Kartik with rasa lila episodes. Participants in Kartik puja, the Hindu woman perform on the banks of the Ganges River throughout the month, consider it to be a version of the rasa lila transfigured into a form appropriate for human woman, and enacted each year in celebration of the earthly rasa lila of ancient times."