Roots and Reflections
from the diary of a reluctant healer
The shloka rattling around my head this morning, a neat little metrical ditty, goes like this:
“dharm artha kāma moksānām / ārogyam mulam uttamam.”
It’s an old (circa 2,000 years) line from the Caraka Samhita, a core text of the Ayurvedic medical tradition.
It says that Arogyam—freedom from disease—is the best foundation (mulam uttamam, literally best “root”) for the ‘four aims of life,’ i.e. righteous duty (dharma), material security (artha), pursuit of pleasure (kāma) and ultimate transcendence (moksa).
Without good health, the rest is an uphill battle—a fact it’s easy to take for granted until health is in question.
I can’t recall all the times I’ve sought to cut corners, to focus on something else for a change, only to be dragged back by some nagging problem to the necessity of looking after the meat-suit, the material vessel for spirit that is the body.
I wouldn’t be in the healing arts if I didn’t have plenty to heal.
Were I blessed with a robust build, less saddled with sensitivity, would I be mucking about with roots and remedies?
In some other universe I became a traveling food writer, an adventurous glutton. In this one my stomach couldn’t hang with the Asian street food. I nearly gave up the ghost in a Delhi hotel room after making the crucial mistake of ordering the spicy naan. Pro tip: never, in India, eat anything described as “spicy.”
But here we are, perhaps a little older and wiser, but no less shackled to the healing wheel. That’s a strange turn of phrase, but one I’ll not change. I can love what I do and still resent its necessity at times. Still wish for more of a respite. The path is narrow, though, and a mis-step can be costly. No way back from here, only on and through.
—
Part of the challenge, lately: balancing the needs of the spirit with those of the body.
Take diet.
Left to my own inclinations I’d be a vegetarian, except that I’d be pale, wasted and listless. Been there. So I eat meat (good meat) and enjoy it, though not without an occasional twinge of guilt.
Despite my carnivorous ways, I found out from recent bloodwork that I had crossed over into iron-deficient anemia. Presumably because too many part-fasting days have crept into my calendar (meatless Mondays, sacrificial Saturdays…). Time to dial back the asceticism and visit the butcher.
The thing is, putting the body squarely before the spirit can sometimes backfire. On a blood building mission these recent weeks, eating meat at most meals, I finally hit a wall yesterday. Something wasn’t working.
I hit pause on all activity, taking time out to re-regulate my out-of-sorts system. Lying there on the futon, the glucose monitor I’m trying out beeping error signals at me, I remembered a dream from a few months back. It was the sort of dream that felt like a distinct message, and as I parsed the symbolism, the message came into focus: abstain from meat on new moon days. Cultivating the courage not to eat, was how it was framed in dream-land. As a way to honor the goddess.
Yesterday was in fact the new moon, and once I made the decision to heed the dream, it was remarkable how quickly I started to improve. Nothing’s tasted as good lately as last night’s simple pasta primavera, a carb-heavy veg meal that left my blood sugar surprisingly steady and stable. (No more beeps from the glucose monitor.)
If there’s a lesson here, it’s something like “be practical, but not only practical.” Or “Feeding the spirit is practical, too.” Or maybe, “Everything in moderation—including moderation.”
Where better to leave off for today than with a bit of paradox?
Happy hunting.
Djed