Åyurveda illuminates the idea of relationality as a determinant of
health. Gerald Larson identifies several possibilities for expanding our
concepts of the self and the human species, and our valuation of the ecol-
ogy of the living world. In suggesting new agendas for healing based on
Åyurvedic and South Asian cultural axioms, Larson employs the logical
concept of abhava ̄ , ‘analytic absence’ to suggest the following perspec-
tives on person, species, and life:
Axiom 1 Absence of separation between birth and rebirth
The person is a product not just of parents, and of action in
the present life, but of karmic heritage stemming from former
lives, perhaps expressible in modern terms of evolutionary
trajectory.
In terms of relationality, an ‘individual’ exists in relation to
past and future instantiations of her/himself.Axiom 2 Absence of separation between self and self, or self and other
Hindu concepts including ̄adhibhautika(sociality) could in-
form a socio-biological notion of ‘species-health.’
Relationality functions in the capacity of pointing out transac-
tional and ‘dividual’ influences on human health.Axiom 3 Absence of separation between divine and human, or between
one species and another
The idea of rebirth in another life-form could ground “an eco-
logical reverence for life that encompasses more than the
human.”^73
Applications of relationality within ecologically grounded
conceptions of life and health are precisely what is needed in
our present world to address the compromised and threatened
well-being of ecosystems and their inhabitants.
Relationality is a motif in both contemporary ecological theory and phi-
losophy of health. In ancient times, Åyurveda used ideas of relationality in
an ecologically informed approach to medicine. Ancient Hindu ecology
conceived the land and the human body as the two kinds of place. Ecology
was integral to the practice of a pathology based not on scientific physiol-
ogy (which 2000 years ago had not yet evolved in India nor Greece),
but on prognosis, the interpretation of symptoms and stages of an ill-
ness. Zimmermann writes that the physician proceeded by “taking into
meanings of health in ̄ayurveda 71