Increasing Health & Happiness with Ayurveda - Part 3 Principle Power
Ayurveda offers guidance on principles that cultivate mental calmness, health and happiness. Negative thoughts not only make us unhappy but can be damaging to our health too. Ayurveda teaches that negative thoughts and actions can take root as toxins in our physicality and contribute to the cause of dis-ease in the same way that toxins from unhealthy eating or poor digestion can.
Toxins in Ayurveda are called ama and they are considered the root cause of all disease; they can originate from poor digestion of food, poor food combinations, unhealthy habits, and negative or unhealthy emotions.
The Ayurvedic guidelines for cultivating a happy and healthy life are as follows:
Focus on positive behaviours such as honesty, compassion, speaking softly to others, cleanliness; and reign in anger, harshness, envy and violence. In Ayurveda violence doesn't just mean road rage or bar brawls - if it did, that would automatically leave most of us in the clear, but Ayurveda also advises thou shalt not kill anything - eating other living creatures as mentioned in Increasing Health & Happiness with Ayurveda Part 1- Fresh & Vital is taking part in an act of extreme violence and both body and consciousness pay a price for that.
These principles are considered to cultivate sattva - sattva is one of the three modes of material existence and it is the only one from which we can experience true happiness and peacefulness.
Of course, we all possess free will and we are all free to choose how we live and what we eat. Ayurveda is not a dictatorial science, it isn't fanatical or holier than thou, but it is here to guide us according to the laws of material nature which are in place and incontrovertible - so how we act is up to us, but if we're not happy we might like to think about our personal principles and see if we are living with care, or stomping through life's garden without much thought.
Photo by alicepopkorn
Increasing Health & Happiness with Ayurveda:
- Increasing Health & Happiness with Ayurveda - Part 1 Fresh & Vital
- Increasing Health & Happiness with Ayurveda - Part 2 Body Basics
- Increasing Health & Happiness with Ayurveda - Part 3 Principle Power