2210 McKinley Avenue, Unit 4 (1 minute walk from Downtown Berkeley BART 1 block west of Martin Luther King, between Allston and Bancroft across from Bank of America Public Parking Lot - Click here for directions), Berkeley, California, 94703 USA
(1) 510-292-6696 - Please CALL US, no e-mail available (Namo AT Shurangama.com).
 

"Om Namo Aryavalokiteshvaraya Bodhisattvaya Mahasattvaya Maha Karunikaya Om Sarva Abhaya!"

Philosophy of the Ayurveda Healing Arts Institute

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The Ayurveda Healing Arts Institute is committed to a holistic understanding of humanity and all living beings as taught in the Ayurvedic, Buddhist, Yogic, Hindu and Taoist Scriptures (Sutras) of Ancient India, Nepal, Tibet and China.  Every living being has a physical body, a mind, emotions and a spiritual nature.  Only when one is capable of developing as a total human being both physically and spiritually can one be capable of enjoying true health and a balanced life.  Indo-Tibetan Ayurveda is the time-tested "Science of Self Healing" taught in the ancient Buddhist, Yogic and Vedic literature.  Ayurveda was developed by the same sages that give us the tremendous philosophical and spiritual classics as found in the Upanishads and Puranas of the Vedic age, the Buddhist Sutras of India and Tibet (550 B.C. to 1000 A.D.).  Thanks to the Silk Road and the Buddhist monks interchange between the four countries of India, Nepal, China, and Tibet, Ayurveda and Tibetan Medicine have been influenced by Chinese Medicine and Chinese Medicine has influenced East Indian and Tibetan Ayurveda.  The Ayurveda Healing Arts Institute's Indo-Tibetan Ayurvedic courses and programs are rooted in the spiritual heritage in which Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine have taken birth, and seeks to propagate its time-honored knowledge in the spiritual context of that ancient tradition.

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At present, most of us no longer know how to maintain our own health and are either actively or passively participating in the destruction of the Earth and her myriad living beings.  We have been taught to maintain the structure of a society that values the acquisition of wealth above all else.  This path continues to separate us from each other and from everything within nature.  Many of us have decided to reject this in part, and are envisioning a world view that acknowledges human needs, the needs of other living beings and the need for spirituality.  Ayurveda is a health system inseparable from its spiritual foundation.  Ayurveda’s world view recognizes the God Consciousness, that is to say the Buddha Nature, the Tao within all living beings.  It places responsibility for humanity to act on our higher spiritual nature and overcome the disease born of excess desire (vata “wind” imbalance), anger and hatred (pitta “bile fire” imbalance), and ignorance and confusion (kapha “muddled mucousy fat” imbalance).

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We follow the advice of Charaka, the venerable 2nd century B.C. wandering Ayurvedic Physician, who states, “Those who trade their healing skills for personal livelihood can be considered as collecting a pile of dust, leaving aside the heap of real gold. They, who provide healing only on humanitarian grounds without desiring any money or personal benefit in return, surpass all other healers.”   

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The vast and complete nature of Ayurveda requires systematic training based on its traditional theories as well as clinical experience. Keeping this in mind, the need for a specific academic and clinical training program for Western countries became obvious. These courses, are based on the syllabus recommended by the "International Council for Ayurveda & Allied Medical Sciences" (ICAAMS) Bangalore.  The material has been adjusted to the psycho-social environment in North America and Europe and the kind of patients Ayurvedic practitioners receive here.  The Ayurveda Healing Arts Institute, is the only traditional Buddhist Ayurvedic College in America and has been requested as the spiritual duty of its founders to offer this traditional "Science of Self Healing" based on the time-tested and venerable Buddhist, Yogic and Vedic Scriptures and literature of India, Nepal, Tibet and China.

Ayurveda is not a separate science apart from the Buddhist, Yogic and Vedic Scriptures.  Ayurveda is integrated within and permeated throughout the scriptures of India, Tibet and China as the health system for this body of knowledge.