What are the five principles of Ayurveda?

What are the basic principles of the Ayurvedic system?

To understand the body, and all of creation for that matter, through the lens of Ayurveda, one must first become familiar with the concept of the five great elements. All organic and inorganic matter in the universe consists of ether, air, fire, water and earth. These elements, not the elements of the periodic table, are the elements that represent the state of matter. Earth is solid, water is liquid, fire is mutable, air is gaseous, and ether is the field in which matter and the force that emanates from it appear. These elements are therefore stages in the creation of matter, the ether being the finer and the earth the grosser, as is evident from the following analogy.

What are the six qualities of Ayurvedic medicine?

Let’s look at a concrete example and how this initial way of thinking can be transformed Ayurvedic principles of health. It is the earth element that gives a solid structure to the cucumber, water is the cohesive agent that holds it together, fire enables it to mature, air facilitates its growth, and ether gives a space in which the cucumber can emerge and develop to eventually sustain another life by breaking it down into small particles when we consume it in a delicious salad.

Because everything is composed of everything, we classify substances according to their racial dominance. Therefore we can say that the same cucumber enhances the water element within our body, because it produces those cold, liquid, non-greasy, heavy and dispersed qualities that are associated with the water element in our system.

Now how does Ayurveda use the primary and qualitative principles in healing? The inherent qualities of cucumber are generally excellent for a person who suffers from a burning sensation during the summer, due to the opposite qualities of cucumber to those found in that particular person. However, these qualities may be harmful to a person who suffers from a runny nose in the middle of winter. The Ayurvedic approach to treatment is viewed through the lens of the five great elements and operates according to the natural law: like increases like and opposites balance. in Principles of Ayurvedic eating Likewise in medicine, substances are classified according to their taste, which are in six numbers. Sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent, each taste represents a combination of two elements, their active force; The energy of cooling or heating, its effect after digestion, and any special effect that may be there, which cannot be determined by logic alone.

Where do the three qualities in humans come from according to Ayurveda?

In Sanskrit, the five great elements are called Pancha Maha Bhuta. Pancha means five, Maha means great and Bhuta is the past participle of the verb root bo, “to become”, so these elements “were”, because they are at the end of the process of evolution as described in the Sankhya philosophy which explains the journey of consciousness into matter and matter back into consciousness.

Sankhya’s view of the development of creation is similar to this beautiful description in the Gospel of John.

”In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Thus said Amen.

This is perhaps the most mysterious gospel in the Bible. The only major difference with Sankhya philosophy is that the author did not see the need to explain God as an independent entity within creation. But the Gospel of John connects God as Creator, with exactly the same causal factor of existence as Sankhya philosophy does, namely, that from the origin of sound, or “logos,” represented by “Amen” or the primordial vibration “Om,” the fabric of time and space is created. This vibration intensifies consciousness through the three main qualities, sattva, rajas, and tamas, into the sphere of one’s identity, which is called ahamkara, or ego. Ahamkara is a biological necessity responsible for the diversity of different life forms. Sattva means transparency, or being, and from Sattva arises the observer signified by cognitive and motor abilities and the mind. Rajas means emotion or movement and from that movement the observer connects with the observed or the inorganic. This objective world is mostly tamas, inert, and is indicated by the elements we receive through the senses.

The basic foundation of Sankhya is that before creation there was an eternal point that had no dimension, size, or quality, and could not be comprehended by our limited perception. In this way, Sankhya and modern physics are very similar, and both say that for whatever reason the singularity multiplied into the existence we know today. However, the cause of creation in ancient physics was explained as part of the Divine Singularity Game, which wanted to manifest itself to be able to perceive itself, thus creating the ability for the individual to experience existence. This universe can be seen as a mirror of this highest truth. Each of us has the potential to be an individual mirror of that uniqueness, which is conceptually described as sat, chit and ananadha, pure being, pure intelligence, pure bliss, which can be said to be qualities of total understanding of life. Man can dissolve into this singularity, or “true nature,” when the mind is fully active but empty of content, just as when a drop of water merges with the ocean and thus loses its identity with its limited radius (body, mind and senses for us humans). This union represents the ability to perceive the uniqueness “almost” smoothly from a unique, limited and separate apparent vessel “the body”.

According to Ayurveda, this is the true Swasthya, the final state of health, which means “being” in that expanded state of consciousness and is known by many other names such as redemption, salvation, liberation or enlightenment. The human mind, an extraordinarily precise product of creation, completely alive but without the fluctuations equivalent to silence – the foundation of the universe, a local representation of that unmanifested state or singularity which the principles of ancient Ayurveda, Indian philosophy, the esoteric branches of the great religions and modern science speak in various ways as the foundation of our existence.

The journey of consciousness into matter

This universe expands, through the primordial vibration, which is sound – the manifestation expressed in the layer of silence or pure existence. We connect to the element of space, or ether, through the sound that the ears receive. Space is all-encompassing and pervasive and serves as a collective “home” for all beings in the universe. Ether is clear, light, subtle, smooth, expansive and immeasurable. When the vibration becomes directional it becomes air, which is a certain movement. We experience the element of air through the skin as a tactile perception. The air is mobile, dry, light, cold, rough and thin. Movement creates friction, it is hot to the touch and this heat creates radiation and thus light, so we interact with the fire element through vision. Fire is hot, sharp, dry, precise and light. This radiant light further dilutes the etheric elements, which become the predominant water element in the chemicals, which are cold, liquid, dull, soft, oily and sticky. Further cooling, attraction and uniformity in the heavy, dull, static, dense, hard and rough features of the more solid element, crystallize in the earth.

Matter is what occupies space and according to Ayurveda, matter, which is the essence of matter, has inherent qualities or attributes that lead to a particular action. Therefore, essence is defined as the inseparable coupling between quality and action. Without quality there is no action, and therefore action is controlled by quality. Quality is that hidden potential energy of a substance, and when we take that substance, the qualities are released in the body which leads to a certain action which is the emergence of consciousness in the substance. As we discussed before, the highest reality of pure consciousness has no quality, but when consciousness is reduced to consciousness, when you are conscious of something, you experience quality. The characteristics are relative and change according to the context. The chair is fixed relative to us, but if you look at the Earth from the moon, the chair rotates around it. If we change time and place, the characteristics change.

What is the relationship between the five basic elements and the five subtle elements?

Not all first principles are easy to understand conceptually, especially the element ether. But we interact with each item mostly through one of our five cognitive senses—hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting, and smelling. We relate to the five elements through the five tanmatras or subtle elements, which are the five cognitive sense beings through which the objective world is sensed, allowing us to perceive the external environment.

• Ether is perceived through the ears as sound
• Air through the skin is perceived as touch
• Fire is seen through the eyes as a vision
• Water is perceived by the tongue as taste
• Earth is perceived through the nose as a smell

The elements evolve to include related tanmatras and each of the previous tanmatras. For example, ether is just sound, but air is made up of sound and touch, while earth is made up of sound, touch, vision, taste and smell. So olfactory perception is unique to the earth element and is the most complete manifestation of consciousness in matter.

Life is possible on this planet because Mother Earth holds all organic and inorganic matter on its surface. May we all be filled with gratitude for the pure compassion of the Great Mother in the form of the five great elements that sustain, create and redeem existential life.