According to the legends and menuscripts the ancient Olympic Games were founded by Heracles a son of Zeus.
The very first Olympic race which was organised in 776 BC was won by Corubus by profession he was a chef.
The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece in 1896. There were 311 male but no female competitors.
The first Olympic games were held in 776BC and then after that every 4 years repeatedly until 339BC.
Since the origin of the world, birth, aging, illness, and death have been unavoidable. Prince Siddhartha learned of this truth when he ventured beyond his palace and visited the poor area of town. Here, amidst beggars, sick people, and decrepit elders, he saw the reality of life. Immediately, a desire arose in his heart to relieve the pain and suffering of these people. Thus, he renounced his life of luxury and became a monk, hoping that through meditation and cultivation he could find solutions for the poor and ailing people. |
From the beginning, the Buddha realized that just as one can suffer from physical disease, one could also suffer from an unhealthy mindset. To cure both diseases of the body and mind, the Buddha devoted his entire life to passing down the knowledge of the Tripitaka1. While the Buddha sought to cure both physical and mental illness, emphasis was placed upon the mind. He used the knowledge of the Dharma to heal the illness that arose from the three poisons: greed, anger, and ignorance. The BuddhaÂ’s medicine treats disease starting from the patientsÂ’ minds, curing them of the three poisons. Psychologists also treat illness by working with their patientÂ’s mental state, but this is quite different from the Buddhist practice of treating the mind. According to Buddhism, the pure and wondrous Dharma is the perfect medication for an ailing mind, as well as a sick body.
Keeping both the mind and body healthy is important, for the body is the vehicle in which we can practice the Dharma. Like all things, the mind and the body are interdependent; the health of the mind influences the health of the body, and vice versa – the health of the body influences the health of the mind. With a healthy body as a tool, we can cultivate a compassionate heart and a clear mind. With a cultivated mind, we are able to examine ourselves, clearly see the nature of our problems, and then work to resolve them. We will then be approaching the path to true health.
In the sutras, we can find analogies that describe the Buddha as the doctor, knowledge of the Dharma as the medicine, monastics as the nursing staff, and all people as the patients. According to this medical analogy, Buddhism is considered a medication with a broad meaning – a medication that can cure the ailments in all aspects of life. In general, but with exceptions, Western medicine functions within a much smaller framework. Western medicine typically approaches illness through physical symptoms. This approach tends to temporarily reduce the suffering and remove the symptoms for a period, but a lack of symptoms does not mean that the root cause has been identified and removed. Therefore, the complete elimination of the disease has not occurred. Buddhism offers patients not only symptomatic relief, but also spiritual guidance to ensure overall and long-lasting health.
While Western researchers have conducted massive studies on pathology, pharmacology, immunology, and anatomy, enabling them to develop more sophisticated medical techniques, scientists still doubt that religion can help explain the cause of a disease. Without validating the role of religion in disease, scientists remain quite distant from the definition of disease, its causes, and its treatments as understood from a religious perspective. According to Buddhism, it is not enough to approach to medicine in a manner that simply eradicates symptoms; the spiritual aspect of disease and its mind-based causes and remedies must be the primary consideration.
Only recently have science and religion started to communicate and blend in a manner that is beginning to narrow the gap between a scientific approach to disease and one rooted in religion. For instance, the U.S. government coordinated international conferences on “The Relationship Between Religion and Health.” Also, Harvard Medical School offers a class entitled “The Essence of Medicine.” Religion is gradually influencing the biological, psychological, and social medicine of Western society. Buddhism has played a significant role in uniting spirituality and medicine in the West.
In the East, religion has impacted the field of health and medicine for a much longer time. Eastern medical practitioners never doubted the role of religion in disease; the two have been integrated for thousands of years. Out of thousands of documents in the Tripitaka, a significant number contain records about Buddhist medicine. When this canon of discourses and sutras was brought to China, the most salient aspects of Indian Buddhism blended with the most highly regarded aspects of Chinese medicine. Through modifications and improvements contributed by numerous Buddhist masters from the past and present, the Chinese Buddhist medical system has evolved into the one that presently exists. In the following pages, I will elaborate further on the Buddhist understanding of illness and disease and the Buddhist approach to medicine and healing
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009 was awarded jointly to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase".
