Ayurveda Initiative For Global Health

Chapter 5 - Overcoming Obstacles  Day 38 Keep your mind engaged in the thoughts of the Enlightened. Your mind is like water. Your mind like water because, just as water assumes the shape of its container, your mind becomes like the thought you engage in. It develops all the qualities of whatever you put into it, namely, your thoughts.  If you think of a calm person, then your mind also begins to assume his qualities. It starts feeling that peace and that quietness. This is because mind is like air. It is energy and is all pervading. Air does not have a location. It is not just fixed anywhere. Veetraaga Chitta - Mind is all permeating.  So it enters your system because it is also like ether. Your consciousness is ether and is all pervading. But then you apply raaga and dwesha even here. That is why it is said that a Guru, or an enlightened person doesn't see one who is liberated from and is beyond cravings as a human being, as a person with likes and dislikes....

Chapter 5 - Overcoming Obstacles  Day 37  Consider your mind as a light, as a flame. Your consciousness is a flame. Your mind is a flame. You may forget this. Your entire body is functioning because of the presence of the mind as a flame in you. Otherwise, you will be like an unlit candle. What is a flame? How does a flame work? A flame burns because of oxygen.  There is a combination of matter and oxygen and a flame comes into being. What is life? Life is also the same. It uses oxygen and lives on some matter. Just as a flame lives on the wax, the wick and oxygen, your life and the mind uses the body and the food in the body as wax. The air is like the oxygen and exhibits its activities in the body just as the flame exhibits its activity.  The consciousness exhibits life. Life and light are very similar. If you put a bottle over a burning candle, it will be extinguished in a few moments. Similarly, if you are shut in a room, without any windows, you can ...

Chapter 5 - Overcoming Obstacles  Day 36  If you are, even for a few moments, with a person who is very unhappy and sad then you also start feeling depressed. And if you are with someone who is very joyful and is bubbling with joy and enthusiasm, then you start feeling joyful, too. You have trained your mind to be happy or unhappy. If you have acquired the habit of being unhappy, then it becomes your second nature.  You feel at home having a long face all the time. You would see this in the senior citizens homes. The very old people there have the habit of complaining. They just go on complaining, even when there is nothing to complain about. And they keep a long face and ever remain sad. You may have wondered why a person who is aged cannot be happy.  They have done everything that they needed to do and they have everything that they need. But, they continue to be sad and depressed. Many people are unhappy because they are unable to work. Well, that is t...

Chapter 5 - Overcoming Obstacles  Day 35 Patanjali knew the human mind very well. And he knew all the crooks and bumps in it. He knew that it could not have the same feeling towards everybody all the time. Feelings can be developed and they keep changing, too. So he said that we should have feelings of friendliness, compassion, joy, happiness, etc.  And ignore or have upeksha - indifference for the sinful things. If this is done, our chitta, our mind would be pleasant. It will become graceful, gracious. In that gracious and grateful mind, one pointedness becomes easy. We should practice devotion to one thing or one aspect. Then, Patanjali said that if all this was difficult, then he would give one more sutra. Breaking the natural rhythm of the breath, holding it and sustaining it in different rhythms. Patanjali has not mentioned Sudarshana Kriya directly. But in this sentence, there is a clue. You can trace your practice to that one sutra because we are doing the s...

🍅🌿THE TANGY TALE OF SAUCY TOMATOES 🍅🌱 🍅🌿Similar to the intriguing story of the eggplant, the history and evolution of the tomato is a fascinating journey that spans cultures and continents. Though we may assume the tomato to have originated in Italy, due its excessive use in Italian cuisine, it might surprise you that the tomato actually originated in the Andes region of South America. The ubiquitous cultivation and market presence of the tomatoes globally, makes it hard to conceive that they actually occurred as wild fruits at one point in time. The wild ancestors of the tomato were small, round, and likely yellow or orangish-red. Unlike the eggplant, the wild tomato was already edible, though its taste and texture were quite different from the cultivated varieties we know today. It took a long time overcoming myths about its toxicity before it was accepted as edible. 🍅🌿 🍅🌿The name "tomato" might seem straightforward...