5 March 2015 - QA 8

What is the meaning of Naimisharanya? I heard you had gone there?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Aranya means forest. Why forest? In a forest there is no fight or violence. Can you imagine, the name for forest is where there is no conflict and there is harmony? And that is how it is. In a forest, animals prey, and once their hunger is satisfied, they won’t kill any other animal. A lion when its hunger is satisfied won’t kill any animal.
In fact, the lion does not kill at all. It’s the lioness that kills and brings the food and the lion sits and eats. The lion is the most lazy of all animals.
So these animals don’t kill each other for fun. Ran means fight or war, and Aranya means where there is no fight or war, and where there is harmony.

In the ancient days, the sages would assemble in the forest and they would meditate in the forest and align themselves with nature. Then they would download all the knowledge and that is how Ayurveda was born.
Naimisharanya is the place where Ayurveda was born. Some Ayurvedic scriptures were written in Pakistan; today's Takshashila. But original Ayurveda was downloaded in Naimisharanya. 88000 saints gathered and they all meditated and all the 18 puranas were written there.

Naimisharanya is very well known in all the scriptures, but people don’t know that the place exists and it is not a tourist place, nor does it have enough facilities. This is a big problem in India. The tourist places are managed so badly, especially pilgrim places have no proper infrastructure or sanitation and it is so neglected. I want to bring this to the notice of the Government. See how badly these things are managed. Even the Jamuna river, we are going to have a big program next week on how this river has got polluted and the Government is doing nothing about it.
Several organizations are launching big campaigns for awareness and to put pressure on the Government to stop chemicals and sewerage getting into these rivers which are considered so sacred. Hundreds and thousands of people are getting affected. Children between the age of 8-15 year olds are getting cancer because of the harmful things released in the river. We have some very action oriented plans for the coming week.