Hinduism and Health

First prepared for the DeKalb Interfaith Coalition for Prevention.

1 Physical Health

Prayers

With our ears may we ever hear what is good and auspicious. With our eyes may we ever see what is good and auspicious. May we with strong limbs and body enjoy the life allotted to us by the powers that be.

May all be happy, may all be free from disease. May all realize the very best, may none be subject to suffering.

O Lord, remove my afflictions and bless me so that my feet will find delight in visiting places sacred to Thee and my hands in performing Thy worship. Likewise may my eyes find delight in the vision of Thy form, my nose in the sweet odor of the offerings at Thy sacred feet, and my ears in hearing of Thy charming ways.

Scriptures

No bacilli can attack the human frame until it is degraded and degenerated by vice, bad food, privation and exposure; the healthy man passes scatheless through masses of poisonous bacilli.

Every part of the body can be filled with prana, this vital force, and when you are able to do that, you can control the whole body. All sickness and misery felt in the body will be perfectly controlled; not only so, you will be able to control another's body. Everything is infectious in this world, good or bad. If your body be in a certain state of tension, it will have the tendency to produce the same state in others. If you are strong and healthy, those that live near you will also have the tendency to become the same....Consciously or unconsciously, health can be transmitted. Health is fully as contagious as is disease.

The poor die of starvation because they can get nothing to eat, and the rich die of starvation because what they take is not food.

Modern Quotations

"Trusting the inner wisdom of the individual lies at the heart of the medicine that I practice. I encourage my patients to get in touch with their inner knowledge. Healing involves a relationship, superficially between doctor and patient, but more importantly between the self and the soul. With the time constraints imposed by the current fast-paced, mechanistic medical system, I often feel frustrated in my attempts to balance an impersonal scientific approach with a more humanistic one. It distresses me deeply to conform to the requirements of medical insurance and reduce my patients to numbered illnesses and numbered treatments... I know that we human beings have great inner resources that are often crucial to our health and well being... Meditation alone can be therapeutic by quieting the often disruptive voices of the conscious mind and allowing a less frantic energy to direct the body."

-- Anthony Allina, M.D.

2 Emotional Health

Prayers

May the world be peaceful. May the wicked become gentle. May all creatures think of mutual welfare. May their minds be occupied with what is auspicious, and may our hearts be immersed in selfless love for the Lord.

O Lord, Thy blissful Self removes all ills and roots out all pain. Do Thou make our lives happy and fruitful.

Scriptures

You must be strong; you have infinite strength within you. How else will you conquer anything? How else will you come to God? At the same time you must avoid excessive merriment... A mind in that state never becomes calm; it becomes fickle. Excessive merriment will always be followed by sorrow. Tears and laughter are near kin. People so often run from one extreme to the other. Let the mind be cheerful, but calm. Never let it run into excesses, because every excess will be followed by a reaction.

Make yourself a dynamo. Feel first for the world. At a time when all men are ready to work, where is the man of feeling?... Test your love and humility. That person is not humble or loving who is jealous. Jealousy is a terrible, horrible sin, it enters a person so mysteriously. Ask yourself, does your mind react in hatred or jealousy? Good works are continually being undone by the tons of hatred and anger which are poured out on the world.

Modern quotations

Even the strongest youth remains but a child if he is always looked after like a child by his parents.

-- Naras Bhat, M.D.

Emotional IQ: Just like our intelligence quotient... our ability to measure, monitor and modify our emotions has a direct bearing on our healing process. Our emotional intelligence is based on two factors: vertical intimacy of understanding and modifying our body reactions to different emotions, and horizontal intimacy of caring for others and sharing our feelings with them.
...We have two basic emotions, viz. love and fear. Out of fear we develop anger, guilt and sadness.

-- Naras Bhat, M.D.

3 Spiritual Health

Prayers

Whatever sins have been committed by me by thought, word or deed, may the supreme Lord, the source of strength, wisdom and purity, forgive me and cleanse me of them all.

Let our speech be devoted to the narration of Thine excellence, our ears to the hearing of Thy wonderful glory, our hands to the performance of Thy work, our minds to the meditation on Thy holy feet, our heads to bowing to the world --Thine abode-- and our eyes to seeing the righteous who are Thy body.

O Thou Lord all-pervading, do Thou remove my egoism and calm my mind. Do Thou take away from me the illusion of the world. Do Thou increase my love for all beings, and save me from the ocean of worldly existence.

Scriptures

No religion built upon a person can be taken up as a type by all the races of mankind.

Whatever retards the onward progress or helps the downward fall is vice; whatever helps in coming up and becoming harmonized is virtue... We believe that it is the duty of every soul to treat, think of, and behave to other souls as such... and not hate or despise, or vilify, or try to injure them by any manner or means. The soul has neither sex, nor caste, nor imperfection.

We must be bright and cheerful, long faces do not make religion. Religion should be the most joyful thing in the world because it is the best. Asceticism cannot make us holy. Why should a person who loves God and who is pure be sorrowful? They should be like a happy child, be truly a child of God.

Modern Quotations

When we feel one with the ocean of matter, we automatically develop the quality of same-sightedness. Hatred, jealousy, envy become meaningless, because I am then able to see myself in other bodies, and other bodies within my body. All distinctions based on color, race, caste and religion seem silly when we realize that physically we are not distinct at all. There is a constant exchange of matter between say, a black person and a white person, an upper-caste person and a lower-caste person, a Jew and an Arab. Where does this leave all the talk of white supremacy, racial superiority, and religious exclusiveness?

-- Swami Tyagananda