Haematological outpourings between hearts

Life’s bullish growth may have been at the cost of the society’s lifeblood @ global economy’s bearish decline just for a single quarter in a whole decade, but eh why not let poor old life get such a rare chance too, even if it’s at the short-term sacrifice of rich upbeat livelihood?! If every dog has his day, why not life? What’s all the fuss about? Aren’t we aware of our resilience despite topsy-turvy priorities? Wish y’all a life-re-inducing World Blood?Donation Day. With brilliant & highly-specialised medical professionals amongst my readers , I dare not venture into the many well-researched, obvious & practical allopathic significances of this act & this day. The profoundness of the Sanskrit equivalent of Vishwa-Raktha-Dhaana-Dhivas?(which is similar sounding in most Bharatiya languages) has many more intricate connotations which we shall gleam over in this post, only to revisit in detail some other opportune day, dominant Eigenmodes willing. The words “giving, donation or charity” are hardly an inkling of what the magnanimous word “dhaana“ implies. The closest English phrase could be a long-winding “selfless offering of oneself to the omnipresent self.” Aapka aapko arpan! In the context of the runa-anu-bandha influences with as much as a simple innocuous touch that we discussed just yesterday, how deep & long-term is the impact of this noble activity of blood ? donation, both on the donor & especially on the donee? In this context, how responsibly & consciously should a regular blood donor conduct his/her own life at all times? Open questions to ponder even for these splendid unsung heroes amongst us, even though they might already be following all the medically-prescribed rules & protocols for blood donation, adapting them as their own rules in their game of life, even before any medical professional imposes it upon them. Organ transplants take this a step further in the all-inclusive motherly nature of the most praiseworthy donors who continue to physically serve mankind way beyond their own current lifetimes, thanks ironically to the all-accepting donee in an inevitable moment. Without mind, we don’t mind when reality laughs at us relishing the slapstick humour because, at the end of the day, we’re neither the bodies donating/accepting the blood/organ, nor the minds fully willing to do so. Never mind! We’re but life itself, in all its glory. Racial colours leash beauty in diversity. In the same vein, here’s a sample of the diversity in blood donations: multidimensional, creative, semi-eternal substitute, unintended, internal, indirect, extrapolating, equation-induced, bloodletting etc! Check them out: Multidimensional rakthadhaana: “Raktham... raktha-vasasam, raktha-gandha-anu-liptha-angam, raktha-pushpai-su-pujitham“ is amongst the multifarious ways in which the foremost aspect of divinity, Ganesha, is described in an Upanishad, belonging to the Atharva-Veda, that I’ve been blessed to recite daily for more than two decades now, thanks to my first vedacharya, pujya Sri Anjaneya Sastry garu, my housemate & academic anuj/thambi/bro at Georgia Tech, whose wisdom belied his age. These four ‘bloody’ references to Ganesha in the Atharvashirshopanishadbring to the fore the significance of not only blood ? but anything even in the colour of blood as an offering or outpouring of (& to) the divinity within us in our very blood flow & donation; Creative rakthadhaana in birthing: the pregnant mother’s magical contributions towards the creation of blood in her foetus; Semi-eternal substitute rakthadhaana in Corpus Christi: we visited this just last Thursday to see how sanctified wine symbolically remains Jesus’ blood ? donation for eternity; Unintended rakthadhaana of Raktabeeja to Kali in Markandeya Purana’s Devi Mahatmyam (also referred to as Durga Saptashati or Chandi Pathah): The demonic asura Rakta-beeja (literally, blood ? seed) in his battle with the Devi(energy personified) instantaneously replicates himself through every drop of his blood which spills onto the ground. This denotes the fact that every drop of our blood (rakta) contains our dormant seed (bija or DNA ) which realises its potential only on its contact with a fertile field, symbolic of the contribution of the pancha bhutas from the planet in enlivening the dormant yet potent seed & in sustaining life. Recollect that we discussed the pancha bhutas in an earlier post in this series. Raktabeeja is eventually eliminated along with 1000s of his clones through their absorption along with every drop of their spilling blood (an unintentional blood donation!) onto the massively spread out tongue of Kalika, symbolising dark energy or the darkness of ignorance (tamas) emanating from the all-encompassing Devi’s forehead, which has the potency to destroy the very seed of life. Beware of inertia!; Internal rakthadhaana by our own incessantly pumping station, the heart , to every cell in our body, supplying blood as a carrier of oxygen & carbon dioxide, like a postman traveling through the roads of arteries & veins; Indirect rakthadhaana by the honey bee , as the chemical composition of warm honey water syncs closely with that of blood ?; Extrapolating rakthadhaana expands the outreach of the energising, self-purifying & clotting-based self-healing characteristics of blood beyond one’s own body to a Self beyond the self; Equation-induced rakthadhaana: Mathematician beyond his times Srinvasan Ramanujan will continue to baffle the world forever. Guess you’d have seen the 2015 movie, “The man who knew infinity” . He used to vouch that the goddess Namagiri Thayaar bled mathematical equations into him; & Bloodletting rakthadhaana or raktha-mokshana is prescribed in ayurveda as one of the preventive & curative panchakarma techniques to address cardio-vascular diseases, cancer, metabolic syndrome, immuno-deficiency etc. Age-old benefits of ayurvedic rakthamokshana/rakthadhaana also include lowering of inflammatory markers & enhancing antioxidant levels, many of which have recently been re-validated by allopathic studies of blood donation too. Extolling the immense benefits of blood donation to the eligible donor, Sushruta exclaimed at least a couple of thousands of years ago: Twak doshaha granthaya shophaha rogaha shonitajascha rakta-mokshanam sheelanam na bhavanti kadachana!