by Om Swami
Additionally, tamas means inertia, dullness and lethargy. Ego is tamas.
PASSION
Passion is called rajas in Sanskrit. Rajas also means blood. Interestingly, rajas also means a vaporous cloud or a sphere of mist. It is this description that gives us the real insight into the nature of passions: they are impermanent and fugacious. Like a cloud of mist, they disappear as soon as they appear. This is the essence of human life.
Throughout our lives we work hard to feel good, to feel happy. But pleasures are never like the gentle stream – they come in squirts and spurts, as if happiness is teasing us. All pleasures spring from the pursuit of passion. The writer at his desk, the athlete on the field, the scientist in her lab, and the artist with her painting – they all derive a certain pleasure in pursuing their passion. Every time a passion is fulfilled, it gives us a glimpse of happiness. A neurotransmitter is fired in the brain. It feels good. This tiny experience of happiness and euphoria subsides after a while, and then we begin pursuing the passion again.
Think of someone overcome with passion and engaging in the sexual act. It disappears completely as soon as they are done. The passion is gone. Fast-moving currents in a river of urges flow into a gentle sea of calmness and equipoise. Till they come back, that is. This is the nature of passion: it’s transient, it’s short lived, it’s temporary.
Rajas sits in the middle of the modes of ignorance and goodness, because during the arousal of passion, one may lean towards either ignorance or goodness. When one’s passion is dominated by ignorance, one could easily harm the other person or even take someone’s life. But when goodness dominates passion, one may even jump into the sea, risking one’s life to save another person. Passion, when tamed and harnessed, brings out the extraordinary in an individual. Such a person may become an inventor, a scientist, a mathematician, a preacher, an artist, a musician, a peace worker or an administrative officer. When it is channelled, this energy bestows exceptional absorption, concentration and persistence on a person.
The fact that the word rajas also means blood signifies that every person has some passion, just as everyone has blood in their bodies. Not everyone discovers their passion, though. Each individual has certain talents and passions hidden in them; it’s in their blood. It’s only a matter of bringing them out. Nature creates with rajas. Therefore, in your microcosm too, creativity is a function of passion. Rajas represents transience, desire and action.
PURITY
Purity is called sattva in Sanskrit. Sattva also means goodness, light and knowledge. But most importantly, it means your innate nature; your basic fabric. Your inherent nature is pure bliss and light. Imagine you are hiding a small lamp in your hands and you walk into a dark room. As soon as you open your hands, the whole room will light up. The light in your hands has removed the darkness. But what if you walk into a lit room, hiding a bit of darkness in your closed hands? The room will not become dark when you open your hands. There’ll be light all around. Because light is the dharma of nature; it is the way of nature. Similarly, our own true nature is light and bliss. If we become aware of our passions and ignorance, they automatically become feeble, because sattva is boosted with awareness.
In fact, yogic and Ayurvedic texts mention knowledge (jnana), scientific knowledge (vijnana), restraint (samyam), mindfulness (smriti) and concentration (ekagrata) as the antidote and treatment for mental afflictions caused by imbalanced mental humours. Each of these five strengthens sattva.
Thesage-physician Charaka makes it clear that ignorance and passion can be faults, and therefore may be detrimental to a person’s physical and mental health, but sattva can never be harmful – no matter what. Sattva represents the quintessential mental, psychical and emotional balance. Nature sustains with sattva. If nature goes out of balance, the world will cease to exist. If rajas is pleasure and joy, then sattva is happiness and bliss.
The constant play and competition between sattva, rajas and tamas triggers changes in mood, emotion and the flow of thoughts. Tamas causes a disease, rajas treats it and sattva heals the sufferer. Sattva represents steadiness, peace, clarity and balance.
Imagine someone shouts at you aggressively, with an intent to upset you. If, then, you contemplate physically abusing or harming this person, it means tamas is strong; it is governing you. In the same situation, if you feel your aggressive emotions well up, but you do not yell at the other person, rajas has won over tamas. If, however, you don’t feel any negativity or aggression; you don’t feel like giving it back to the person, nor do you have to curb your reaction – in simple terms, you remain unaffected – it means that your mode of goodness, sattva, has won over both tamas and rajas.
Our mental and physical humours have an intricate relationship with the energy flow and the digestive fire in our bodies. Vedic texts list many types of fire, notably, the fire of wisdom (jnana-agni), the fire of the senses (darshana- agni), the fire of passions (kama-agni) and the fire of love (prema-agni). For our benefit or to our detriment, these are the fires that heat, transform, mould and shape us. When unchecked, they can also burn us. Most people in our world are burning in one or more of these fires – the burning to have more money, be famous, be recognized, own something, have someone, be something and do more. These fires first give us warmth, then they dry us out – and then they burn us. These mental fires arise out of fluctuations in our mental humours. They affect the fire in our body directly, impacting our health and well-being.
There are thirteen fires in the human body controlling various metabolic functions in the organs and tissues and at a cellular and molecular level. Of these, the four digestive fires are dominant; they govern the others.
THE FOUR TYPES OF DIGESTIVE FIRES
Fire does not discriminate between the good and the bad. It rejects nothing. Imagine a fireplace in a wooden cottage, well lit and heated. The embers are glowing and the wood is burning. If this fire goes out of control, it will burn the house down. The fire does not differentiate between the firewood and the wood that the house is made of. A similar lack of discrimination is a critical property of digestive fire. First, it burns the fluids in the stomach, then it burns the solids. If it does not die down, it first burns the vital bodily fluids (apa) and then the life force (prana); the person feels acidic, suffers from heartburn and becomes parched and dehydrated. Digestive fire only helps the body if it is moderated and managed.
The fire in the physical body is called jathara-agni in Ayurveda. Jathara means stomach and agni means fire. It helps every living entity digest food. The Vedas name it vaishvanara. It means universal, sacred and the sun. From the outside it may appear that our bodies are generating heat, but the view of the Vedas is far more profound than that. The digestive fire is also called the sun, because everything we consume already has the fire of the sun in it. Grains, vegetables, roots – or, in fact, any food items – they were all nourished by the sun before they became our food. Hence, the heat was already in them. Our metabolic processes simply reclaimed the heat and passed it on to our system. Later in this book, I talk about how food can be hot or cold – not just in temperature, but in its effect on the body. For now, let me elaborate on the four types of digestive fire.
Balanced Fire
It is called sama-agni. Sama means even and balanced. A stomach with a balanced digestive fire is the sign of a healthy body. In fact, a body can only remain healthy if the digestive fire is in balance. Sama-agni means that vata, pitta and kapha are even and not vitiated at all. Food digests and assimilates properly in those endowed with balanced digestive fire. It increases the quality of the seven dhatus. It not only leads to fine physical health but perfect mental equilibrium too.
Wicked Fire
Wicked fire is called vishama-agni. When wind (vata) is vitiated and it affects your digestive fire, it is called vishama- agni. Imagine a flag planted in a place where the wind is blowing sporadically. The flag flutters whenever the wind blows and remains s
till otherwise. Similarly, vishama- agni alternates between increased secretion of digestive juices and then barely any secretion. The food either gets digested too quickly or too slowly. The patient may think that something is wrong with his food, but his problem is an imbalanced digestive fire. It can lead to diarrhoea, dysentery, stomach ulcers, rumbling in the stomach, flatulence and eructation.
Sharp Fire
Sharp fire is called tikshna-agni in Sanskrit. When digestive fire is imbalanced due to vitiated heat (pitta), the condition of tikshna-agni arises. The word tikshna also means acidic. This fire is particularly acidic in nature. Regardless of the type of food consumed, it digests rather quickly. A person with tikshna-agni tends to feel hungry again soon after having his meal. As soon as the food digests, his throat, mouth cavity and lips become dry. There is a burning sensation in his chest and stomach which robs his body of its strength. Tikshna-agni can cause anomalies in urine, colic, hyperacidity and vertigo. In some cases it can also lead to hepatomegaly or haematoma.
Slow Fire
Slow fire is called manda-agni. When deranged phlegm (kapha) affects the digestive fire, it becomes manda-agni. Manda means slow. A patient with manda-agni eats much less than the average person, and even then is unable to digest the smallest quantity of food. He is particularly intolerant of dairy products and feels heaviness in the abdomen and head. This is a highly unhealthy condition. The undigested food produces toxins that rise through the windpipe causing it to swell temporarily, creating breathing difficulties and other problems. This is the primary cause of asthma, bronchitis, cough, nausea and fatigue. Patients suffering from manda-agni suffer from irregular bowel movements, and they also tend to drool while sleeping due to excess salivation.
People governed by sattva generally have a balanced fire. Those with a predominance of rajas tend to have either wicked or sharp fire, depending on the state of vata in their body. Those with more tamasa have slow fire. We can either align our mental humours and fix our physical ailments, or we can change our lifestyle and soothe our mental afflictions. Neither option is mutually exclusive. Yogic scriptures advocate building a mental and moral discipline to attain perfect health. Ayurveda, on the other hand, focuses on the outward influencing the inward. It encourages an external discipline to feel happy and healthy. It demonstrates how food can transform us.
Ayurveda states that one should consume foods according to one’s constitution. When we do that, our nature starts to synchronize with nature, and the foods we eat lead to better health and harmony. Each food has a certain quality that affects our well-being. Just like we have physical and mental humours, food too has something similar.
Every natural food has a living energy in it. This is the mystical aspect of our food. It is why the fermentation of grapes and the fermentation of wheat are not the same. Even if two foods have identical tastes throughout the four stages of digestion, it doesn’t mean that they’ll have the same effect on your mind. In the short term, they may appear to have the same effect on your body. But ultimately, it’s their effect on your mind that will determine the outcome for your body.
Foods invigorate or aggravate your genetic disposition. The food you eat and the manner in which you eat it makes a great difference to your physical and mental health. No, I’m not asking you to become a vegetarian, I’m simply giving you a new perspective on food.
6
We Are What We Eat
Why do we consume food? Clearly, it is not just for survival. We are more evolved than that. If it were just for sustenance, half of life’s struggles would disappear, because we would just eat anything at all and not be concerned with the taste and flavour. The truth is, we expect a certain fulfilment from the food we consume. It is the reason we tend to go out sometimes, or eat different cuisines or even just different food items. Each type of food offers us a slightly different experience. Our mind craves the experience that only comes from consuming certain foods. But what is it in the food that makes us feel that way?
Vedic scriptures state that across all the animate and inanimate living entities, there are 8.4 million species on our beautiful planet. These are spread across the numerous plants, mammals, worms, birds, sea life and other species. We are one of the 8.4 million species. Every living entity is born with a certain natural tendency. It’s called svabhava. Sva means natural or normal, and bhava means sentiment or tendency.
The natural tendencies of a creature compel it to behave in a certain way. A tiger may pounce, a deer may be frightened easily, a bull may charge, a cow may tolerate, a snake may rattle and a scorpion may sting. They are born with a set of natural traits. This energy of tendencies never really dies but gets transferred from one entity to another. Even plants have it. It is indestructible – every cell of your body is infused with this energy.
Some plants grow in spring, while some trees give fruits in autumn; many flourish in summer whereas some do in winter. It is their svabhava – their natural tendency. Whatever we eat, by digesting it we reclaim its energy and it becomes a part of our system. The energy of the food affects our energy. It has a significant influence on our physical, emotional and mental well-being. Everything we eat is one of the 8.4 million species and as such has certain tendencies. Those tendencies are divided into three categories, namely, purity (sattvic), passion (rajasic) and ignorance (tamasic). Yes – they are named after our three mental humours of sattva, rajas and tamas.
THE THREE TYPES OF FOOD
Anything your body digests is food. How your body processes food and how much you benefit from this processing depends on your attitude towards food, towards life, towards yourself and towards others. It depends on your mental state. When we consume food, it is not just about eating, digesting and excreting. We have, in fact, made a silent agreement with the food. We have agreed to absorb the energy from the food along with its svabhava. We are about to become the food we’ve just consumed.
Ayurveda and yogic texts state that the nature of our food is inseparable from our own nature. When we eat sattvic food, it gives us inner clarity, determination and peace. Rajasic food fuels our passions, and tamasic food creates aggression and restlessness. They are named after the three mental humours, because food has a direct impact on your state of mind. For example, alcohol, coffee and tea can have an almost immediate effect on your mental state.
The ancient yogis spent a majority of their time in meditation and related practices. But they long realized two fundamental truths of our existence. First, there is little joy in living or even in meditating in the absence of good physical health, and second, the foods we consume can trigger thoughts, emotions and feelings. The yogis figured a calm mind was infinitely more powerful than a restless mind. They considered food the most important factor for a calm mind and good physical health. Upon deep contemplation, they also recognized that food could be the greatest obstacle to good health. Based on the mental humours, they expounded the classification of inherent tendencies of foods, dividing them into the three categories of sattvic, rajasic and tamasic.
Sattvic
Created from the word sattva, food full of goodness is called sattvic. The Bhagavadgita lists ten characteristics of sattvic food. Sattvic food supports the seven dhatus in our body by providing nutrition at each of the four stages of the food’s processing by the body. Due to its natural tendency of light and goodness, it strengthens the body, boosts our physical health and calms the mind. Sattvic food, being inherently pure, arouses emotions of love and compassion. All living creatures eat, but we are the only ones with refined taste. Therefore, sattvic food should be sumptuous and not too dry, because good food purifies us. Sattvic food pacifies the three doshas; nutrition is its hallmark. Further, it promotes overall well-being and ensures longevity.
Above all, sattvic food promotes mental stability and quiescence. Think of some of the vegetarian mammals in our world – cows, camels, elephants, goats, sheep, deer and giraffes. What
comes to your mind when you visualize them? They all have big, compassionate eyes. They are all docile creatures. Their sight immediately arouses compassion and love in the viewer. There’s a fundamental difference between carnivores and herbivores. The herbivores mostly sit with their front legs tucked in while the carnivores sit with their frontal limbs spread. Omnivores alternate between the two postures. Vedic texts regard the former posture as a sign of an inward mind that promotes stability and grace in movements. Sattvic food naturally makes you turn inward. You don’t feel the urge to spread yourself.
Most wholesome food items like fresh vegetables and fruits fall into the sattvic category. The alkaline foods of our present world are synonymous with the sattvic foods of olden times. The only exception is dairy food – Ayurveda treats milk, butter and clarified butter as sattvic, whereas contemporary medical science considers it acidic. We will get to more of that in the sub-chapter ‘Acidic and Alkaline Foods’.
Rajasic
Foods that arouse passion and desires are called rajasic. These foods make a person restless or too active, and have a negative effect on memory, disposition, calmness and physical health. In particular, if they are consumed even somewhat excessively or carelessly, it vitiates the three doshas. Foods that are too bitter, too hot, too spicy, too pungent, too salty, too dry or too acrid are rajasic foods. These foods are the source of suffering, the yogis say.
According to them, it is better to have a calm mind free of desires than to have a restless mind full of unfulfilled ones, because non-fulfilment of desires leads to depression and sadness. Let’s take the example of Vishy, a man in his late thirties. Vishy used to live in a small and quiet house with his wife and two daughters. He worked as a supervisor in a factory and made enough money to have a basic but decent lifestyle. He was debt-free. The real-estate market crashed and the price of houses fell by more than thirty per cent. Vishy and his wife couldn’t resist temptation. They sold their primary home, also at the prevailing lower market price, took out a mortgage and bought a million-dollar home, because they believed they got it thirty per cent cheaper.
