Ayurveda Initiative For Global Health

Sparrow's Mango (Buchanania arborescens) is a medium sized tree that can grow up to 35 m tall, and may sometimes have buttresses upto 1 m high.   Bark is smooth, greyish brown, red on the inside, and oozes harmless greyish gum when cut.  Crown is compact with upright leaves that are spirally arranged.  The stalked leaves have leathery leaf blades that are green, oval to drop-shaped, with a blunt tip, and network-like venation.. Young leaves are reddish in color.  Its flowering shoots are 5.5–22 cm long, and bear small creamish-white flowers with 5-6 petals.  Fruits are tiny, globular, about 1 cm in diameter, reddish to purple-black when ripe.  These are eaten by sparrows, imperial pigeons and other birds.  Aboriginal people of Australia eat the fruit raw. Unripe fruits may be boiled and cooked. When ripe, they become sweet and pulpy, like gooseberries, although their rind is ...

Chapter 2 - Honouring The Practise  Day 11  Once you know the nature of your being - total bliss and total pleasure - even the fear about the gunas and the fear about the world will disappear. It is like diabetic patients being afraid of sweets. The sight of sweets frightens them because they are forbidden. But the one who has sweetness in him doesn't mind if there are sweets near them. This is parama vairagya.  Supreme dispassion, ie., not being scared or running away from the world but being in it, completely centered. People have very peculiar ideas about enlightenment. Every culture and religion has got its own ideas about it.  In the Christian religion a rich man cannot be enlightened. It is impossible. You have to be poor to be enlightened. Form the Christian point of view, Rama could not be enlightened. He ws a king. How could a King be enlightened? Even if a camel could go through the eye of a needle, a rich man could not be enlightened.  On...

Chapter 2 - Honouring The Practice  Day 10  The craving for any of the sense objects or celestial heavenly places that the mind gallops towards is an obstruction. Any expectation in meditation is an obstruction.  You may have heard that someone had seen a light or somebody coming from heaven and taking them by hand. So, you sit with your eyes closed and wait for an angel to come or to have a light shine on you and then to burst into million stars.  All these ideas and thoughts become an obstruction. If you have dispassion, you will feel that you are not giving up anything for nay of these pleasures. Your desire for pleasure or happiness will make you unhappy. If you examine yourself whenever you are miserable or unhappy, you will find that your misery is due to your desire to be happy.  Craving for happiness brings misery. If you don't even crave for happiness, you are happy. You crave for happiness and you invite misery. When you don't care for happ...

This week we take up the study of plants from another family that falls in the order of Sapindales. That is the cashew and mango family, Anacardiaceae. Today's post is about Kedondong ( Spondias dulcis) also known as Hog Plum or June plum, is a fast-growing, tropical tree that can reach up to 20 m high. It is valued for its edible fruit that is a drupe containing a fibrous pit.  The tree bears pinnately compound leaves with oppositely arranged elliptic-oblong leaflets, which are finely toothed toward the apex.  The flowers are small and inconspicuous, with white petals and are produced in panicles. Its oval fruits, about 6–9 cm long, are borne in bunches of 12 or more on a long stalk. Over several weeks, the fruit fall to the ground while still green and hard, then turn golden-yellow as they ripen. It is a very nutritional food containing Vitamin B,C, and A. In West Java, its young leaves are u...