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Couldn't have said it better myself. I think about this stuff a lot, how much ancient and modern overlap, how much Eastern and western overlap, yet how people s

Couldn't have said it better myself. I think about this stuff a lot, how much ancient and modern overlap, how much Eastern and western overlap, yet how people still want to divide everything. "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein "The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and the intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world… Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work. Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic, it is learned and it is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not. That’s the power of intuition and experiential wisdom." - Steve Jobs Carl Sagan was really keen on seeing 'the bigger picture' too, can't find the particular quote I was looking for. Maybe later.

bmh100 10y ago
These divisions are very important. As long as mystical beliefs towards Eastern thought are used to cause real harm through herbal remedies and supplements, the public must be taught to give it less importance. Among critical thinkers, it is valuable to look for similarities in scientific histories.
- good_vibes 10y ago
  Big Pharm and meat-based diet do a lot more harm to the entire biosphere and individuals than Ayurvedic medicine and yoga. Don't even get me started. I don't know much about Eastern medicine outside of India to be honest. One exception: Chinese people buy tiger bone Viagra, elephant tusk art, rhino horn something, and shark fin soup. I was born Hindu but became closer to Buddhist as I learned more about the scientific revolution and how it built the modern world.
  - E6300 10y ago
    > Big Pharm and meat-based diet do a lot more harm to the entire biosphere and individuals than Ayurvedic medicine and yoga. Cars kill more people per year than heroin, therefore heroin is healthier than cars. Let's wait until pseudo-scientific treatments become multi-billion dollar industries and then we'll talk about what does more harm to what.
    - good_vibes 10y ago
      I'm not talking about pseudo-scientific anything dude. 1.) A meat-based diet is directly linked to higher cancer rates. "The World Health Organization has determined that dietary factors account for at least 30 percent of all cancers in Western countries and up to 20 percent in developing countries. When cancer researchers started to search for links between diet and cancer, one of the most noticeable findings was that people who avoided meat were much less likely to develop the disease. Large studies in England and Germany showed that vegetarians were about 40 percent less likely to develop cancer compared to meat eaters." http://www.pcrm.org/health/cancer-resources/diet-cancer/facts/meat-consumption-and-cancer-risk http://www.pcrm.org/health/cancer-resources/diet-cancer/fact... 2.) A meat-based diet is directly linked to clearing wild habitat for more farm animals. "Both the meat-based average American diet and the lactoovovegetarian diet require significant quantities of nonrenewable fossil energy to produce. Thus, both food systems are not sustainable in the long term based on heavy fossil energy requirements. However, the meat-based diet requires more energy, land, and water resources than the lactoovovegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet. The major threat to future survival and to US natural resources is rapid population growth. The US population of 285 million is projected to double to 570 million in the next 70 y, which will place greater stress on the already-limited supply of energy, land, and water resources. These vital resources will have to be divided among ever greater numbers of people." http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full 3.) U.S. eats more meat than any nation on Earth and also has the most expensive health care in the world too, 20% of the GPD. We have a society whose delusions cause diseases and destruction around the world. If I was wrong, there wouldn't be so many brilliant scientists, doctors, artists, and entrepreneurs on this same train of thought. 4.) Yoga, meditation, plant-based diet have all played a major part in creating the modern world including computers and the internet. If people don't have discernment to know true from false, that is their shortcoming and not Dharma. ;)
- jsudhams 10y ago
  anecdotal but had chronic sinusitis , allopathy mentioned only surgery as last option and that would also comeback after 5 to 6 years added sleep apnea. 3 months of regular Ayurveda and 12 days intense treatment. No issues now and very happy.
- arjo129 10y ago
  Last I checked homeopathy was western. i think your bias towards eastern medicine would be better founded if you were to say faith healing rather than eastern. Within eastern medicine one also finds people who used early forms of experimentation to derive working cures. Examples of working medical cures include boswellia used to treat bursitis, artemisin used to treat malaria. Also both Chinese and Indians had developed anaesthetic before Europeans. Similarly the procedure of rhinoplasty was developed in India. When the British came in western surgeons studied the technique and took it back to Europe. In fact hygiene was a critical part of the ayurvedic surgeons life well before Europeans realized the importance of hygiene in surgery. Of course there are a lot bogus stuff in eastern cures as well but in the west you have stuff like homeopathy. I think the key take away is that you cannot divide by east and west. We are after all human and each culture has their own contribution to the face of the earth.
  - good_vibes 10y ago
    Exactly. I believe it is possible to synthesize the logic of the West and the intuition of the East.
  - gatlinnewhouse 10y ago
    It should be noted as well that the concept of the "Eastern" is also Western in origin. A good read about this is Orientalism by Edward Said.
  - jernfrost 10y ago
    You are trivializing the significant difference modern western science based medicine and earlier medicine. Of course people could come up with all sorts of practical solutions to various ailments and conditions through trial, error and observations. That however does not make it scientific. There is no scientific theory in you Chinese and Indian examples on which to make predictions and explanations. One example would be e.g. germ theory. It allows one to make predictions about things not yet observed. It helps explain why washing your hands is good. Now you can learn this from practical observations, but if you have no idea that the reason is due to germs being removed, then it prevents you from experimenting with and finding alternative cleaning agents or practices.
fuck_google 10y ago
I wish people wouldn't consider Steve Jobs as an authority. He was a great salesman, but his "reality distortion field" could as well be called "creative lying". He was so good at bending the truth that he even managed to convince himself that "alternative medicine" would offer effective cancer treatment, which got him killed.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953887 and marked it off-topic.

bmh100 10y ago

These divisions are very important. As long as mystical beliefs towards Eastern thought are used to cause real harm through herbal remedies and supplements, the public must be taught to give it less importance. Among critical thinkers, it is valuable to look for similarities in scientific histories.

good_vibes 10y ago
Big Pharm and meat-based diet do a lot more harm to the entire biosphere and individuals than Ayurvedic medicine and yoga. Don't even get me started. I don't know much about Eastern medicine outside of India to be honest. One exception: Chinese people buy tiger bone Viagra, elephant tusk art, rhino horn something, and shark fin soup. I was born Hindu but became closer to Buddhist as I learned more about the scientific revolution and how it built the modern world.
- E6300 10y ago
  > Big Pharm and meat-based diet do a lot more harm to the entire biosphere and individuals than Ayurvedic medicine and yoga. Cars kill more people per year than heroin, therefore heroin is healthier than cars. Let's wait until pseudo-scientific treatments become multi-billion dollar industries and then we'll talk about what does more harm to what.
  - good_vibes 10y ago
    I'm not talking about pseudo-scientific anything dude. 1.) A meat-based diet is directly linked to higher cancer rates. "The World Health Organization has determined that dietary factors account for at least 30 percent of all cancers in Western countries and up to 20 percent in developing countries. When cancer researchers started to search for links between diet and cancer, one of the most noticeable findings was that people who avoided meat were much less likely to develop the disease. Large studies in England and Germany showed that vegetarians were about 40 percent less likely to develop cancer compared to meat eaters." http://www.pcrm.org/health/cancer-resources/diet-cancer/facts/meat-consumption-and-cancer-risk http://www.pcrm.org/health/cancer-resources/diet-cancer/fact... 2.) A meat-based diet is directly linked to clearing wild habitat for more farm animals. "Both the meat-based average American diet and the lactoovovegetarian diet require significant quantities of nonrenewable fossil energy to produce. Thus, both food systems are not sustainable in the long term based on heavy fossil energy requirements. However, the meat-based diet requires more energy, land, and water resources than the lactoovovegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet. The major threat to future survival and to US natural resources is rapid population growth. The US population of 285 million is projected to double to 570 million in the next 70 y, which will place greater stress on the already-limited supply of energy, land, and water resources. These vital resources will have to be divided among ever greater numbers of people." http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S.full 3.) U.S. eats more meat than any nation on Earth and also has the most expensive health care in the world too, 20% of the GPD. We have a society whose delusions cause diseases and destruction around the world. If I was wrong, there wouldn't be so many brilliant scientists, doctors, artists, and entrepreneurs on this same train of thought. 4.) Yoga, meditation, plant-based diet have all played a major part in creating the modern world including computers and the internet. If people don't have discernment to know true from false, that is their shortcoming and not Dharma. ;)
jsudhams 10y ago
anecdotal but had chronic sinusitis , allopathy mentioned only surgery as last option and that would also comeback after 5 to 6 years added sleep apnea. 3 months of regular Ayurveda and 12 days intense treatment. No issues now and very happy.
arjo129 10y ago
Last I checked homeopathy was western. i think your bias towards eastern medicine would be better founded if you were to say faith healing rather than eastern. Within eastern medicine one also finds people who used early forms of experimentation to derive working cures. Examples of working medical cures include boswellia used to treat bursitis, artemisin used to treat malaria. Also both Chinese and Indians had developed anaesthetic before Europeans. Similarly the procedure of rhinoplasty was developed in India. When the British came in western surgeons studied the technique and took it back to Europe. In fact hygiene was a critical part of the ayurvedic surgeons life well before Europeans realized the importance of hygiene in surgery. Of course there are a lot bogus stuff in eastern cures as well but in the west you have stuff like homeopathy. I think the key take away is that you cannot divide by east and west. We are after all human and each culture has their own contribution to the face of the earth.
- good_vibes 10y ago
  Exactly. I believe it is possible to synthesize the logic of the West and the intuition of the East.
- gatlinnewhouse 10y ago
  It should be noted as well that the concept of the "Eastern" is also Western in origin. A good read about this is Orientalism by Edward Said.
- jernfrost 10y ago
  You are trivializing the significant difference modern western science based medicine and earlier medicine. Of course people could come up with all sorts of practical solutions to various ailments and conditions through trial, error and observations. That however does not make it scientific. There is no scientific theory in you Chinese and Indian examples on which to make predictions and explanations. One example would be e.g. germ theory. It allows one to make predictions about things not yet observed. It helps explain why washing your hands is good. Now you can learn this from practical observations, but if you have no idea that the reason is due to germs being removed, then it prevents you from experimenting with and finding alternative cleaning agents or practices.

fuck_google 10y ago

I wish people wouldn't consider Steve Jobs as an authority. He was a great salesman, but his "reality distortion field" could as well be called "creative lying". He was so good at bending the truth that he even managed to convince himself that "alternative medicine" would offer effective cancer treatment, which got him killed.

dang 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953887 and marked it off-topic.