Meeting an Indian Doctor
During many years of experience and contacts with Indian culture
I had the pleasure to meet a lot of personalities; in
particular, one of them impressed me a lot because of his
extraordinary humanity and experience about medicine. He went to
visit me in Milano, and I gently asked him to briefly define the
principles of Indian medicine.
It is important to say that the word Ayurveda – he said – has a
deep meaning from which you can understand many things. The word
Ayurveda, in fact, is made of two words: Ayus+Veda. Ayus
(Sanskrit) means Life and the word Veda means Knowledge. Keeping
in mind this concept, we can see that there is a very
interesting and diametrically opposite behavior between the way
we understand the word Life in modern medical science and in the
ancient Ayurvedic science.
Modern medical science affirms that until one’s heart is beating
the person is alive, although he suffers from a bad disease and
is kept alive with all possible means, including the mechanical
ones that artificially intervene to regulate his vital
functions.
Ayurvedic science, instead, states that a person can be
considered alive only if he’s physically, mentally and
spiritually healthy. This science founds its origins from Veda,
the most ancient books handed down to us by the millenary Indian
tradition. The Indian book Sutrasthan by Charak Sahimta says
that “Ayus” (Life) is the combination of Panchamahabhuta and
Jiva. Panchamahabhuta are the five “gross” elements: earth,
water, fire, air, space that are on the basis of the
manifestation of the ancient philosophical system Samkhya, while
Jiva is the individual conscious system.
For both Charak Sahimta and Sushrat Sahimta, Ayurveda is not
only a system of medicines to cure diseases and body’s
unbalances, as it happens in modern allopatic medicine. Ayurveda
is, above all, a master of knowledge of an all-comprehensive
life philosophy, that describes and deals with science and
technology of creation, preservation and emancipation of the
universal life process. Moreover, it doesn’t deal with human
life only as of conception but also as of origins of “Karma and
Samskara” of previous lives.
The Sanskrit word Karma suggests the cause-effect law, Samskara
are memory’s fragments inside men both at a conscious and
unconscious level, Karma and Samskara that body inherits and
brings with itself from previous lives to the present one and
then will bring with itself in the next life after death. All
knowledge about Veda is of vital importance in today’s world –
my guest affirmed – because it can show to us the way to go over
every mental and physical suffering, that go away when we
unravel the vicious spiral Karma-Samskara that border us in a
state of total obscurity.
All the development of life process before us is only the
endless cycle of birth, Karma, Samskara, Karma, death and
rebirth. This process continues endlessly until we are under the
deep impressions of Karma and Samskara that seem to stifle our
mind and soul. This cruel cycle – finally – push soul into a
vicious and endless circle, made of short pleasures, pain,
sufferings and fear of death. For this reason, in Ayurveda, the
supreme goal of human life is to get free from this slavery, and
the process of getting closer to this state contains the
awakening of awareness of that (Atman), that inside us is
eternal and motionless.
by Amadio Bianchi