Sunday, December 21, 2008

A cupped handful of food. A full stomach. The GheranDa samhitaa. Onaka Ippai!

The fifth chapter of the GheranDa samhitaa, a classic encylopaedic text on yoga states -
A good rule of thumb is that the stomach holds the same content as both of ones hands formed into a cup. At a given meal, one should thus eat as much food as can be held in the two cupped hands and one cupped handful of water.


御腹 - onaka or stomach
一杯 - ippai, 一 one; 杯 cup.

This is the phrase that every Japanese person uses to say that his stomach is full.
One cupful.

One more construct that goes to show that the kanji and the Japanese language have direct representations of ancient wisdom.


(Here in Japan the average lifespan is in the high 80's (that includes urban places like Tokyo) - so push that number up by 10 or 15 more years for rural areas like the place where I live.)



1 comment:

Aalhad Saraf said...

@sfauthor:
Thanks!
No, I didn't know about these.
Btw, are -you- B.D. Akers? :-D

I just read the bio on your site.

What are you working on these days?

warm regards,
A. Saraf