Prajnaparadha

Ultimately, all diseases are mental — all are caused by willfulness, that perversion of intellect and common sense which makes us do what we are not supposed to do. This willful perversity is prajna paradha — "offense against wisdom."

For example, suppose you are a Vata-Kapha person living in northern Minnesota. It is the middle of the night in the middle of winter and a blizzard is blowing outside. You are suddenly struck by a craving for ice cream. You know that ice cream is cold, wet, sticky, heavy, and Kapha-producing, and that both night and winter are Kapha times, and that your constitution has Kapha in it. You know that if you eat the ice cream you are begging to increase Kapha, but you do it anyway, and the next morning your system is thoroughly clogged with Kapha.

This is your "punishment" for an "offense against wisdom." It is not punishment in the classic sense — no one sits on high throwing thunderbolts at us for eating the wrong food. This sort of penalty occurs automatically when one of the rules of healthy living is violated. As an astute Indian woman once said, we are punished not for our actions but by our actions — each of our offenses against wisdom seeds the reaction that follows.