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Modern living offers us many comforts and luxuries. The
pace of life has been constantly increasing especially
in the last two decades. New gadgets and instruments
have been invented which help us work faster and travel
to distant places in a short time. The technology has
enabled us to do more work in less time and grow
materialistically. The cyber revolution has removed all
boundaries and there are more opportunities for economic
growth. Modern Medicine has invented diagnostic tools
and therapeutic formulations, which can identify
diseases at the minutest levels, and suppress it.
All these wonderful inventions of the modern times were
originally discovered to enrich our lives with health,
happiness and peace. Interestingly enough, the results
are totally opposite such expectations. In our search
for happiness, health, peace and love, we have found
more diseases, mental unrest, unhappiness and
loneliness. This means we are either going in the wrong
direction or we are missing the root cause of the
problem. Otherwise, we would be achieving what we are
striving for. I feel it is time we take a deep breath,
relax and think where are we heading.
Health is not merely the absence of symptoms or physical
discomforts. Ayurveda defines health as a complete state
of balance at the level of body, mind and soul. While
the modern world offers us solutions for comforting the
body and senses, these “solutions” are actually
disturbing the mind and are unfulfilling for the soul.
When the mind is disturbed and there is lack of love in
our lives, blockages and imbalances are created in
physical organs and systems. This is why our efforts to
become healthy are not working out. The solution to all
our problems is Ayurveda.
Ayurveda is ‘veda’ (knowledge) of Ayu, which is defined
as a combination of body, mind, senses and soul. Each
one of us has a body, mind and soul but we hardly know
anything about them. It is like we are driving a car
without knowing much about how it works, what kind of
fuel to put in it, not knowing the traffic rules, and
not even having a driver’s license. What will happen in
such a situation? This will result in lot of accidents.
This is what is happening in our lives. We do not know
how much to eat, when to sleep, how to relax the mind,
how to nourish the emotions, how to have relationships
and what is food for the soul. Similarly, with the car,
we have “accidents,” like diabetes, stress, auto-immune
disorders, divorce and emotional trauma.
The solution is Ayurveda. Today our diseases are not
limited to the body only. More and more people are
suffering at mental and emotional levels. In order to
treat these diseases we need to address them at the site
of their origin. We are not even able to suppress the
physical symptoms of diseases because they are fuelled
from a subtle level. If we want to see a healthy world,
it will happen only through Ayurveda, because this is
the only medical system, which caters to the ‘complete’
human (body, mind, emotions, soul). It may be a few more
years before the world realizes the wonderful power of
Ayurveda, but in any event, I strongly believe that
Ayurveda will be our future medical system. Ayurveda is
not limited only to oil massage (abhyanga) and
shirodhara as most people think. If offers solutions at
every level of an individual. Most existing medical
systems like homeopathy, acupressure, herbal medicine,
gemology, energy healing, breathing exercises, and even
modern medicine has a root in Ayurveda. Ayurveda is the
“mother” of all medical systems and will very soon be
the main medical system of the world.
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