It involves a complete change in ideology, whether it be in economics,
sociology, politics, or morals. It is freedom or nirv ̄aÓnanot in a world
that transcends the world of experience, but one in which the individual
and society enjoy the best of health and happiness.^8The Buddha identified malnutrition as a disease, and as a cause of the
root disease: suffering. Physical malnutrition is a prime threat to health,
and was identified by the Buddha as destructive of the moral fabric of so-
ciety. Thus individuals’ having adequate means of earning a living is
foundational to the health of individual and society.^9
Health influences, and is influenced by, community. Health is not
just a matter of one’s own systems functioning well within oneself; health
requires that entities and systems throughout a community participate in
mutually helpful exchanges. Besides the fact that health is contingent on
community in terms of factors such as food supply, the healing process it-
self requires community, but communityconceived more broadly than
human social community. To request healing is to appeal to a source out-
side oneself to help restore well-being. In saying this I do not deny the in-
nate power of self-healing. In fact, healing must ultimately be generated
from within oneself, but its instigation may come from a source that
somehow redirects or infuses energy to permit the re-establishment of in-
tegrity in the affected system.
The request for healing may be made of such sources as a medical
practitioner, a religious practitioner, a human community, a deity, or a
tradition, such as Yoga. I have argued that identity is an integral determi-
nant of health: Part of what it means to be in health is to have the aspects
of oneself functioning in a sufficiently integrated way, so that one can
participate in experiences that manifest and sustain one’s Self-nature.
Against the view of classical Yoga, I submit that identity can be found in
relationality. To have knowledge of, and actualization of, one’s Self-
nature means to establish one’s identity in relation to something. The re-
lation may be conceived from the standpoint of the UpaniÓsadic statement
of the relation of the individual self or Åtmanwith the one Brahman: Tat
tvam asi,“That thou art.” Or the relation may be conceived, as it is in
classical Yoga, in the terms “I am not that,” by locating one’s identity in
puruÓsa, consciousness, and recognizing that one is not of the nature of
matter or prakÓrti.In Tantra, Self-nature is realized in terms of identity
with nature and the divine. Lakota religion, as another example, suggests
the realization of self-identity in terms of relatednesswith the natural
world and sacred forces. The Lakota invocation Mi ̄tu ̄kuye Oyas’in ̧, “All
community:relationality in religious therapeutics 171