Month: November 2025

Nothing can tell more about a culture than its ‘untranslatable’ or ‘difficult to translate’ words.

The word doesn’t have to convey something deep—it might simply describe everyday actions or even be a swear word.

Such words also help in gaining a deeper understanding of your own culture.

As I see, these words should never be translated but always used in their native language, as there’s a clear danger of the entire concept being totally misunderstood.

A case in point is the Sanskrit word “Dharmā ” that  has come to mean religion as it is is understood in the West. A whole idea evolved and nurtured over millennia is just lost in translation in one generation.

Wabi Sabi is a subtle Japanese cultural concept deeply embedded in daily life, yet rarely discussed, not defined, or translated.

Since we need known words to understand unknown words, it could mean

Authenticity

Simplicity

Imperfectness

Asymmetry

Impermanence

Uniqueness

It’s similar to the word Shibumi, which can carry different meanings depending on cultural and generational backgrounds.

No matter what, if this idea takes root in how you think and see the world, you’ll experience greater calm, a deeper acceptance of the world, and a more compassionate acceptance of yourself as you are.

No doubt , its a great idea.

For someone native to the culture, a few words or a simple gesture might convey the meaning, but for those unfamiliar with Japanese culture, an entire book would be needed  and that may still fall short.

Enjoy Reading : Embrace a Happier, More Fulfilling Life : Cheers !

 

But then…

Man the Unknown is a classic written by a leading French surgeon and biologist in 1935 , highlighting the aspect of how little we really know about the human body.

Science has made huge progress since then but the question remains .. “Do we really know enough about the human body to lay down  binding  rules for the whole world.

Your Body Already Knows is a written in 2025 by a successful  practitioner  of Ayurveda from US. Yes, to be taken seriously one has to speak from Texas rather than Tenkasi.

Recently , the Chief Scientist of Zoho Corporation was in  controversy over his skepticism of a few vaccines like HPV among others . He also suggested that the rise in autism in the United States had something to do with the increase in Vaccine shots administered to infants in US. As always , the critics , who are anything but scientists cried “Anti- Science” , “Science illiterate” and of course “Sanghi at heart”

Since when questioning has become Anti Science ? Science is all about forming a hypothesis , then questioning that hypothesis  and proceeding to prove it one way or the other through experiments.

One Tweet on this issue   is definitely worth pondering over ….

…..To understand why medicine is so complex, let’s make a crude simplifying assumption that there are only 100 biomarkers that are important (in reality there are vastly more). Let’s also crudely assume each marker is allowed only two values. That gives us 2^100 possibilities, which is about 10^30. That is vastly more than humans that ever lived. And this is with the extremely over-simplified model. We face a practical infinity of possibilities. In reality, no two patients are ever really alike. No statistical model can give you very high confidence on how to treat. That is why AI can never treat patients, because human doctors exercise something called “clinical judgment”. That judgment is what enables a doctor to tell us “this is not a serious issue, get good sleep” vs “this definitely needs deeper investigation”. That judgment is hard. Often they cannot even explain why they arrived at this but great doctors have that intuition. The entire Big Medicine is about systematically dismantling clinical judgment and convert doctors to mere “protocol pushers”. Great doctors resist this. 

Who is this “Big Medicine”..  It’s the pharma industry and the insurance industry. Scientists and doctors (yes ,they are different entities, doctors are not scientists and scientists are not doctors and most critics who use science as a shield or neither scientists nor doctors ) are bypassed.

It’s against this backdrop that it makes sense to listen to your body as your body knows something that that doctors, scientists and the Big pharma don’t know.