death. Longevity means long life, and connotes living to great age with
vitality. In Hindu medicine, life and longevity are central in the concept of
health: Åyurvedameans ‘knowledge of life and longevity’ ( ̄ayus,‘life’;
veda, ‘knowledge’). Åyusin the term Åyurveda means the combination
of body, senses, mind, and soul [CS 1:1.42 ], but in the compound term
Åyurveda, ayus ̄ connotes the support and prolonging of healthful human
life [CS 1:1.41]. In Åyurveda, life means not merely biological thriving:
the desire to live long and well is recommended as the first priority [CS
1:11.3–4].
The term ‘development’ applies to biological growth, but also to in-
tellectual, social, and other kinds of progress in one’s awareness and ca-
pabilities. Because human beings have high potential for intellectual, so-
cial, athletic, creative, and spiritual achievement, part of being healthy
means cultivating one’s knowledge and abilities. Without such lifelong
development, a person tends more toward stagnation than toward opti-
mum health. Changeis an explanatory principle of the processes of life
and development, and of disease and death as well. In biological terms,
children’s growth and development constitute change in the direction of
healthiness, while impaired development marks problems with health,
owing to factors such as inadequate nutrition, congenital abnormality,
injury, or illness. Nineteenth-century pathologist Rudolph Virchow re-
garded diseases not as ontological entities, but as representing “the
course of corporeal appearances under changed conditions.”^16 Illness is
marked by changes in sensations, capacities, and sometimes of appear-
ance.^17 Change is integral to healing as well: to undergo healing is to
undergo transformations wherein the normal conditions of life are re-
stored, and to cure is to generate and assist transformations that restore
the normal conditions of life.
Along with conception, death is an ultimate change of state of the
physical body. Disease and injury may lead to death, yet there is such a
thing as a ‘healthy death,’ a death experienced as part of the natural cycle
of coming to be and passing away. Healthy death is exemplified by death
from old age, when a person is not suffering greatly from the debilitation
or pain of a particular condition. Instead, he or she retains a degree of
strength and self-sufficiency until the time that the body has aged to the
point that one or more systems cease to function. Åyurveda’s notion of
longevity means more than long life; it means cultivating long life in
health and vitality, thus establishing conditions for a healthy death. At
any age, the idea of ‘healthy death’ applies to cases where a person’s pow-
ers to thrive are diminished, yet death is accepted with equanimity. The
meanings of health in ̄ayurveda 51