"Dr.Bheshajam-bhishak" - The Unseen Healer - Part 3

[Guest guest]

(Continuing from Part 2 posted earlier)

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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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