Chinese Natural Healing
Stephen Lau
Chinese Natural Healing
Stephen Lau
Chinese Health Attitudes
Diligence
Diligence is expending effort, enthusiasm, and energy to bring about meaningful changes in health attitudes. It is part and parcel of the art of living well.
Diligence is one of the seven virtues in Chinese culture.
Health attitudes form the first pillar to uphold the premise of a healthy lifestyle for natural healing.
There is a Chinese maxim: “Sloth brings no heath.” Do you ever find a lazy person healthy? Probably not. Laziness is a disease -- a disease of the mind, and hence of the body. Man is destined to toil. Laziness does not bring about natural healing: a lazy person will readily reach out for a drug to treat his or her ailments, or a burger instead of cooking a healthy meal.
Good health is a gift from Heaven. However, to receive that gift, you need to appreciate it with recognition. In other words, you will have to earn it through diligence, not sloth.
What is diligence?
Diligence is effort, enthusiasm, and energy used to transform self. With the right health attitudes, you accordingly make the choice of right actions. A healthy lifestyle is built on diligence to develop the right health attitudes.
Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher, once said, "The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools."
Essentially, a healthy lifestyle is built on your health attitudes, which become your tools for healthy living.
You have to be aware of your own health conditions. No one is a better physician than yourself because only you know how healthy you are. Remember, good health is not simply an absence of disease, and wellness has to be wholesome.
Be diligent in changing your health attitudes. If you keep on doing what you have been doing all your life, you will continue to be what you have been for the rest of your life.
Change your health attitudes now. Time is of essence. Do it now!
While knowing what is good for you is one thing, doing it is another. This is where diligence comes in.
According to diligence in Buddhism, you must display diligent efforts in your pursuit of the good.
Diligence is sustained energy to maintain enthusiasm on your journey of health and wellness, which may be difficult.
Diligence is unfailing determination to do good to others as well as to oneself for spiritual wellness, which is a component of natural healing of the body and mind.
Through diligence, you will experience intuitive knowledge, which is the essence of human wisdom. It cannot be taught, but only experienced through one's own enlightenment. This profound wisdom opens the door to natural healing for health rejuvenation.
Diligence is one of the seven virtues of healthy living for natural healing: chastity, abstinence, liberality, diligence, patience, modesty, and humility.
The other virtues
Chastity
Chastity, one of the seven virtues, embraces moral wholesomeness, thereby achieving purity of thoughts through continuing education and betterment for self discovery. Good health includes not just physical health, but also mental and spiritual health. Natural healing of any disease would not be complete without wholesome mental and spiritual health maintained and sustained through chastity.
Abstinence
Abstinence, another one of the seven virtues, is constant mindfulness of others and your surroundings; practicing self-control, abstention, and moderation. The Chinese wisdom of the “golden mean” (no extremity in everything) speaks volumes of the importance of abstinence or self-control in a healthy lifestyle.
Liberality
Liberality, as opposed to greed, is generosity -- a willingness to give through nobility of thoughts or actions. Mother Teresa once said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." That says everything about liberality.
Patience
Patience is forbearance and endurance through moderation.
Resolving conflicts with others, more importantly with yourself, peacefully, as opposed to resorting to anger and grudges (often the sources of stress and depression affecting mental health). The ability to forgive others and, more importantly, to forgive yourself holds the key to good mental health requisite for natural healing.
Patience also refers to giving your body adequate time for natural healing. Do not resort to instant fix of your health problems by using pharmaceutical drugs or other invasive procedures. Let Nature do the work of healing.
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, once said: "Healing is a matter of time, but it is also a matter of opportunity." A healthy lifestyle offers that opportunity.
You may control your own health and disregard the pharmaceutical industry and deadly drugs from your doctors: Take Control of Your Health.
You may control your blood pressure drug free.
You may control your cholesterol level drug free.
Patience is a virtue in natural healing. Give your body the opportunity to heal by itself, instead of using dangerous drugs.
Modesty
Modesty is kindness manifested in compassion, friendship, and sympathy without prejudice and not for its own sake. Modesty, without envy, creates harmony with others as well as within yourself for inner peace, which is essential to the Chinese art of living well for natural healing.
Humility
Humility is selflessness, which is giving of due respect without glorifying your own self.
These seven virtues form the components of health attitudes in the art of living well for natural healing.
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau