Saturday 9 September 2017

From Avidyā to Vidyā

Few years back I got interested in Ayurved. Started reading whatever came my way but somehow I was not able to gain knowledge out of all unconnected bits of information I was throwing to myself by reading this or that. So, I also tried reading Classic texts and still found myself able to absorb nothing. Now, given my information foraging style, I often start learning anything where initial inputs seem unconnected and learning is slow but if I stay interested long enough, I usually make 'some' progress. But here, I wasn't getting that feeling of progress.

Then, in few months time, I realised what was the problem. I had been trying to understand health for some time - couple of years at least - of course by reading what allopathic minds had written and it was only when the feeling that not only they are missing most of the things, the foundation itself didn't make sense, grew so much, I had shifted to Ayurved. I started reading Ayurved, which was good - but - I still read in terms say - Heart problem - > cholesterol - > How does Ayurved helps reduce cholesterol?  or, List of symptoms -> IBS -> no clue in allopathy, but how does Ayruved help in IBS. To make the matters worse, many of what I read in initial days was also written by those thinking like how I thought then. (which was natural as what I was reading was based on my own google searches.). But ultimately I realised - the precondition to start making progress was to be able to see health as what it is, not in terms of what I had already termed 'not satisfactory'. It wasn't however so easy to shift seeing things as Vata Pitta Kaph imbalance  - have you ever changed your frequently used light switch from one place to another after using it at its previous place for months/years? Knowing it once that its shifted does almost nothing to where your hand goes when you want to switch on/off the light. and here, I didn't even know how to see things in terms of Dosha imbalance. But anyways, once I was on track, it wasnt that difficult to see other things also which I could have never seen while trapped in old state of Avidyā. Like, how body and mind affect each other, how your food will not only affect Dosha balance of your body but also Guna balance (Satv, Rajas, Tamas) of your mind. or that how your Vihar and Vichar affects both Body's Doshas and Mind's Gunas etc.

As I learned and therefore searched better, I found better results and one of the place I reached often and was always impressed was a site Ayurvedacollage.com. I would often read an article there admiring the clarity and unadulterated Ayurvedic approach, and when I reach the end, get kind of confused - the author name was that of a westerner.. but anyways, I almost always had few more tabs open and I had to read them too so I move ahead. But my repeated landings there (sometimes reading same page again and again) gradually ensured that the western name - 'Dr. Marc Halpern' I so often looked at in confusion / simply ignored became a person I started respecting a lot. One day, I also notice there are some multimedia resources available on the site. One of which, I really liked and would like to share and recommend. It is,
'The Role of Consciousness in the Healing Journey' on this page. (Scroll towards the bottom under 'Audio recordings').

Actually, I thought I should share the above link here - and that's why I ended up writing this whole post.