Health and Healing: An Indian perspective

Cultural beliefs shape the suffering and healing experiences of people, and the healing process is essentially a reconstruction of suffering in accordance with the beliefs and traditions of a culture. In the Indian view, transcending suffering means giving up the ‘I’ or the ego, for wholeness is attainable only when one finally stops dividing off one’s ‘I’ from the rest of existence. Healing begins once a person is aware of his wrong identification with ‘I’ or the ego. Health and healing are consequences of a way of life, whereby the individual endeavors to realize her/his essential nature. Thus in Buddhist Psychology the root cause of suffering is primeval ignorance, which creates the notion of ‘I’ as an individual entity, the doer, the feeler and the thinker. This in turn gives rise to the concepts of ‘I and mine’, ‘thee and thine’ from which originate craving and aversion. What we call ‘I’ or a ‘being’ is only a concatenation of the five impermanent aggregates, viz. the body, consciousness, intellect, feelings and volitional mental formations, which work interdependently, changing from moment to moment in accordance with the law of cause and effect. By a systematic cultivation of the mindfulness of these aggregates anyone can progressively uproot the ego and purify the mind by extinguishing this fire of defilements continuously burning within it. As the mind gets progressively purified, it awakens from the illusion of ‘personality’ and naturally abides in loving kindness, compassion, altruistic joy, and equanimity to increasing degree.