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SriRangaSri List Archive: Message 00072 Jun 2005

 
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         (Continuing from Part 2 posted earlier)
-----------------------------------------------------

Dear friends and members.

Next in the Vishnu-Sahasranama, there are 2 more
beautiful ?nAmA-s? revealing the nature of the
Almighty as Healer of last resort. These two names are
full of deep Vedantic significance. When the
Sahasranama is recited these two ?nAma? are usually
chanted together to sound as though they are one and
the same: ?bhEshajam-bhishak?. Their meaning too seems
to reveal itself as single although nuanced strands of
truth. Hence, it is alright to study the two together
at once. 
 
The traditional commentary of Parashara Bhattar
explains the 585th and 586th ?nAma? as follows:

(a) ?bhEshajam? ? the final remedy for the affliction
of unlimited sufferings of ?samsara?, and,

(b) ?bhishak? ? One who is adept in the diagnosis and
treatment of the disease ?bhAva rOga? the disease of
worldly existence and sorrow.

To understand the significance of these two ?nAmAs? it
would be helpful first to inquire into what exactly is
meant by Health? 

The easiest way to define health is to say it is the
absence of illness. In Sanskrit, the word for health
is ?aarOgya?: ?rOg? means ?disease? or ?affliction?;
the pre-fix ?a-? means ?anti-?. So, ?health? in the
Sanskrit lexicon may be translated more or less
accurately as ?anti-disease? --- i.e. the ?absence of
disease?; a state of human existence that is
unaffected, untroubled by the pain of any affliction
or injury. 

Why should ?health? in the Sanskrit language be
defined in such a negative way? Because it is the
absence of illness in life that most of us seek far
more than, in fact, we really pursue health. There is
a world of difference between the two that we must
discern. While the former is rooted in morbid fear or
worry the latter, on the other hand, is impelled by
positive desire. We hardly ever wholeheartedly embrace
the things in life that are said to actively promote
health. But the instant we come to know of the onset
of a disease or illness, we will go to any lengths or
cost to rid ourselves of it. It is precisely the
reason why none of us ever voluntarily takes to daily
regular physical exercise, or moderation in dietary
habits, until the moment arrives when we suddenly
discover that either arthritis or diabetes has quietly
possessed us and threatens to bring us down.
?Prevention is better than cure? is a very old adage
but its wisdom has never yet quite dawned on men
through the ages.  

The world these days worries greatly about ?health? in
precisely the same negative sense of the term as
revealed to us in Sanskrit. The UN?s biggest worry
today, for example, is the spread of raging HIV across
half the continents in the world. National governments
all over the world worry about ?health-care?
allocations in their budgets. Wall Street
pension-funds worry about future health-costs for an
ever ageing population in America, Western Europe and
Japan. At the individual level, again, we see
practically everyone around us worried sick about
?health?: Mothers worrying about their children?s
?health?; children about their parent?s; fat people
worrying about weight-loss; lean people worrying about
anorexia; young wives worrying about bulging
waist-lines and husbands worrying about job-stress
wearing away either their heart or their prostrate or
both? When it comes to "health" it is indeed always
worry, worry and more worry!

The most dreaded illness of all is however the disease
called ?indignity of old-age?. Once upon a time ?Old
age? used to be known as a certain stage in a man?s
life poetically called the ?evening of one's life?.
Not anymore! ?Old age? is now looked upon as an
ailment. People cringe with fear at the very mention
of this ?ailment?. Its classic symptoms are failing
eyesight, impaired hearing, rasping breath, wobbling
teeth, brittle bones, shriveled skin, slurred speech
and fading memory. In the modern era, even if you are
untouched by any other clinical ailment, if you have
contracted this "virus of old-age? or senility, so to
say, you can expect you will be pronounced as having
an irreversibly pathological condition and hence
marked out for social quarantine if not personal
sequestration. No wonder, people fear ?old age? like
the plague! They dread it more than they dread
Alzheimer?s or Parkinson?s.      

Most people we meet these days, thus, seem to be
living on the edge of some silent yet oppressive
pent-up panic. They are on some kind of constant alert
against the disease, the condition or the malady which
they fear is lurking around the corner and is going to
ambush and strike them down sooner or later in life.
Diabetes, cardiac malfunction, breast-cancer,
sclerosis, bulimia, anorexia, dementia, Parkinson,
Alzheimer, HIV, cirrhosis, pneumonia?. The list is
long and lethal! The risk of contracting any one or
more of such diseases either from the food they eat,
water they drink, the air they breathe or from the
people they rub shoulders with, is for them ever
present and real. It hangs perpetually above them like
a Damocles sword. It is a very sad and beleaguered
state of mind indeed that people are in and today?s
powerful media --- popular TV talk-shows, tabloids,
magazines and the Internet--- they do their best to
keep it that way. They keep feeding and stoking the
public paranoia through so-called ?researched
features? euphemistically titled ?Health Watch?,
?Healthy Living? or ?Stay Fit? programs. 

Beyond doubt, fear of disease now inspires more dread
in people?s minds than the disease itself. It?s a kind
of universal angst, a hypochondrium that has mankind
seized in deep, collective melancholia. Far from
enabling us to remain healthy, cheerful and carefree,
this nagging anxiety to escape from illness or injury
in life, this morbid, cankerous obsession with
?health?, gradually but surely, has itself turned into
a dreaded, fatal disease.

It is precisely such mortal dread, such acute fear
which in Vedantic philosophy is said to be the Mother
of all Disease: It is the affliction called ?samsAra?.

             ***************

Where is this fear and anxiety surrounding ?health?
rooted? ?SamsAra?, says Vedanta. The reason why
?health? is a cause for constant human worry, fear or
anxiety is because it relates to ?sarIra? ? the
fundamental reality of the Body. 

>From the moment we take birth as humans until the day
we shed our mortal coils, whether we like it or not,
all of us have to deal with and come to terms with the
reality of our ?sarira?. Over the years during our
lifetime, we all come to look upon the body?s state,
form and condition as our very own. When the ?sarira?
enjoys pleasurable experiences, we believe we are
rejoicing; and when it undergoes pain we too suffer
its agonies much in sympathy. Eventually, we all come
to believe that who we are is really defined by what
our respective ?sarIra? becomes. When the body grows,
we believe we are growing too. When it gains beauty or
strength, we believe we too have become strong and
beautiful in person. If our teeth dazzle as we smile,
we sense our inner self within sparkling too; on the
other hand, when we watch our head balding away
rapidly, we cannot help feeling a deep sense of
personal loss. ?. And so on and so forth. Invariably
we all grow into believing, nay, in fact we become
quite convinced that the sum of all whatever happens
to the body, our ?sarIra?, is about all that also
really happens to us in life. We live IN our bodies;
we live WITH it; we live BY it; and, as we perhaps
might realize it towards the very end of our mortal
days, we discover that, all through life, we live
wholly and solely FOR the sake and benefit of
?sarIra?, the body alone. 

In Vedanta this complete and inescapable
identification with ?sarIra? is known variously as
?prakruti-?, ?sarIra-? or ?samsAra-sambhandham?. It is
also ?bhava rOg?, Parashara Bhattar?s term for it in
his Sahasranama commentary. It is the cause of much
human misery. It is certainly the cause of all the
anxiety over bodily ?health? which, as we have seen,
consumes us bit by bit, cell by cell, in life. It is
the principal reason too why the prospect of illness
and injury, not to mention the spectre of ?old age?
and decrepitude, fills the human heart with so much
foreboding and terror.

If only our identification with ?sarIra? were to be
somehow diminished or withered down, or else,
otherwise made less absolute than it is so strongly
conditioned to be; if only there was a way out in life
by which it became possible for us to easily and
completely dissociate our inner selves from the
reality and paradigm so severely imposed upon us by
the Body? if only we could somehow cut asunder such
human bondage,  and break out free from such
?samsAric? chains, then neither anxiety nor fear about
the state and condition of our ?health? would ever
trouble us, would it?  There would be no ?health? to
worry about because there simply would be no illness,
injury or disease to worry about! There would be no
disease to fear because there would simply be no more
intense identification with the Body! 

In other words, the Mother of all Disease, ?samsAra?,
would just no longer be able to hold us captive in her
oppressive embrace! 

               (to be continued)

Regards,

dAsan,
Sudarshan





                
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