Crime Against Wisdom

It is a difficult thing at times to know if our choices are guiding us towards wellness, compassion, and longevity. Or leading us towards imbalance, suffering, and disease.

Ayurveda offers amazing insight into the origins and process of disease. One way it does so is through the term prajñāparādha, which is understood as the actions we take when not listening to the body's intelligence. To commit a crime against wisdom.

Prajñāparādha is responsible for emotions such as hate, envy, jealousy, anger, fear, anxiety, grief and egotistical activity. It happens due to selfishness, desire, greed, competition, hate and envy. This is known as adharma (unrighteous acts). ¹

Vis Medicatrix Naturae

The Healing Power of Nature

This is a Latin phrase that speaks to the healing power innate in nature, and this natural wisdom is what Ayurveda understands to live within you.

This phrase honors the body's ability to heal, and the medicines found throughout the natural world. It also reminds us this understanding is not unique to Vedic thought. Many traditional systems have pointed to an organizing intelligence that exists both outside, in seasons, climate, and ecology, and inside, in digestion, repair, immunity, and the quiet sense of what helps and what harms.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, a related idea appears in the Five Shen, five aspects of mind spirit housed in the Zang organs. Together they describe how consciousness, instinct, imagination, intention, and will shape physiology, and how physiology shapes them in return.

In Ayurveda you might hear this same inner intelligence described through:

• Prāṇa — the vital life force that governs movement, breath, and the coordination of body and mind.
• Agni — the transforming intelligence, digestion, metabolism, assimilation, and the ability to convert food and experience into nourishment.
• Ojas — the essence of deep nourishment, vitality, immunity, steadiness, and resilience.
• Tejas — the subtle fire of clarity, radiance, perception, and discernment.

You may be wondering: How or why do we take actions that go against this wisdom? When does it happen? How do we know? How can we tell?

The shortest answer is compassion and discernment.

This wisdom is smart enough to give you the tools to be able to listen, to pause, and to change your mind.

However, before I tell you how to develop discernment, I'd like to share two key models.

The first describes how a decision is made, and the second how disease develops and thus clouds our judgment.

Antaḥkaraṇa

Drawing of Ayurveda's Concept of The Mind

The top portion of this image shows the process of how we take in information, move into action, as well as the quiet awareness that witnesses it all.

It starts with the light of a tree reflected into the eyes. Before recognition of the tree, the inner instrument is already at work.

• Sensation (light input through the eyes)
• Feeling-tone (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) — is the light too bright or dim for the eyes?
• Interpretation and reasoning (sorting, comparing, judging)
• Recognition ("this is a tree")
• Mental image and story (the mind's internal picture and meaning)

This happens so fast, and almost always without our conscious awareness. Instead we stay entangled with the noise of thoughts like "I like this tree", "I should put one in my yard", "This reminds me of climbing trees as a child".

The key point is that our choices are not made only at the level of willpower. They are formed upstream in this inner processing. Formed where our feelings, reasoning, memory and recognition live. If the inner instrument is clouded by stress, habit, strong desire, or doshic imbalance, then the same process can produce distorted cravings and poor decisions. If the inner instrument is clear, feeling and reasoning support wise action.

Prajñāparādha teaches us that we can create our own sufferings and diseases by not listening to the body.

Process of Disease

Drawing of Samprāpti

This process is known as Samprāpti and it is the six stages of disease. This is Ayurveda's map of how imbalance becomes disease. This model shows that when discernment is still available, we can stop disease from spreading and becoming worse.

Healthy Intelligent Cravings

1. Accumulation | Sañchaya
2. Provocation | Prakopa

In these early stages, the body's signals are protective. If heat is building (pitta), you may naturally crave cooling and soothing foods, more water, rest, and shade. All things that reduce the imbalance.

Intelligence Defeated by Imbalanced Doshas

3. Spread | Prasara
4. Deposition/Localization | Sthāna Saṃśraya
5. Manifestation | Vyakti
6. Differentiation/Destruction | Bheda

As the doshas spread and settle into vulnerable tissues, symptoms get stronger and the mind more reactive. Cravings can start to carry the same quality as the imbalance itself. This creates a distortion, and instead of cravings guiding us back to balance, they pull us deeper into the disease.

So someone with burning acid reflux may know spicy food will make it worse, and still reach for jalapeños. Not because they lack information, but because the inner instrument has been colored by the imbalance. This is prajñāparādha: acting against what the body is trying to communicate. A crime against wisdom.

Kindle the Flame of Discernment

One last trap of the mind is that it turns on itself and brings shame. It can get stuck in an endless, painful cycle that says, “I always know what to do, but I just can’t, and therefore I’m a failure.” That is not the point of prajñāparādha.

The models of the inner instrument and the process of disease are here to show us what happens, and to give us the ability to notice where we are. Ayurveda is a compassionate science. We do not say someone is hateful. We say their pitta is aggravated, and that heat can cause emotions and responses like hate, jealousy, anger, and blame to arise. This is how you must view your own health journey. The qualities of imbalance can penetrate the mind, and the antaḥkaraṇa process shows us that we are more than the mind. We are the witness behind it all.

May we learn to witness ourselves, pause, and take action in line with the body’s wisdom, and in doing so kindle the flame of discernment.

There are many ways to rekindle this discernment, often spoken of through agni, the transforming intelligence of the body and mind. Every person is unique. What you crave, the choices you make, and the patterns you are trying to change are tied to the doshas, so they deserve individualized recommendations. When you receive guidance from an Ayurvedic practitioner, it will be specific to you. For now, here are a few common ways to help dissolve the cloud of confusion that fuels and prolongs prajñāparādha.

Yoga

• Prāṇāyāma: cooling (Śītalī, Śītkārī) or kindling (Kapālabhātī, Bhastrikā, Agni Sāra, Bhrāmarī)
• Āsana: Vinyāsa, Haṭha
• Meditation: Trāṭaka, So’hum, Japa

Ayurvedic Diet and Lifestyle

• Dīpana and Pācana (digestive kindling and support)
  • Ginger
  • Black pepper
  • Pippalī (long pepper)
• Eat seasonally
• If you notice a craving and you are unsure if it is wise or not, drink a glass of water and walk for 15 minutes around the block

If you build a routine around these practices, you may be amazed at what can happen to your cravings, and what can happen to the difficulty you feel when trying to change other behaviors. Above all, be kind to yourself. As your thoughts soften, your actions will follow. Surround yourself with friends who support you, have compassion for your current state, and with time and practice may your choices in life never again be a crime against wisdom.

ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः