WHY DO WE FALL ILL

The root causes of disease

Seeker: I beg the compassion of Your Reverence. Please teach
me the way of emancipation.
Seng-ts’an*: Why, who is binding you?
Seeker: No one is binding me!
Seng-ts’an: Then why do you search for emancipation?

• Zen master

The roots of disease, both physical and mental, go far deeper
than we can imagine, into the very depths of our psyche.
What causes it?
Strange as ii may sound, every single one of us is leading a
dual life two lives at the same time.
The first is what Swamiji calls our ‘Imaginary Life’ or ‘Dream
Life’, which is the kind of life we would ideally want to lead
— our ideas of what to do in our lives, what sorts of
relationships, we would want to cultivate, what things we
would want to possess and so on. In conflict with this
Imaginary Life is our ‘Practical Life’ or ‘Real Life’, which is,
the kind of life we are actually leading — where we have to
earn to live, bring up our children, meet and get along with
unpleasant people, endure disharmonious relationships and do
all kinds of things we don’t want to, all in the name of
practicality.
For most of us, there is unfortunately a huge gap between our
dream life and our real life. This constant conflict between the
two naturally leads to a lot of mental stress, partly because we
are unable to deal with issues intelligently.
With the passage of time, issues evolve into problems and are
internalized to become worries, finally manifesting themselves
as physical & mental disease.

So disease is nothing but ‘A state of being ill at ease with
oneself, with one’s dreams and with reality.’