---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: ayus
title: Āyus
iast: Āyus
devanagari: आयुस्
description: 'Life defined as the conjoined persistence (saṃyoga) of body, senses, mind, and self, the four-fold union whose knowledge is Āyurveda itself; NOT lifespan as a number of years, NOT biological life excluding consciousness, NOT longevity as a wellness goal.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Charaka Sūtrasthāna 1.42
tags:
- ayus
- life
- samyoga
- ayurveda
- consciousness
not:
- term: 'lifespan as a number of years'
  why: 'Duration is one dimension of āyus, not its definition. Charaka defines life as the ongoing conjunction of śarīra (body), indriya (senses), sattva (mind), and ātman (self). A long span of that conjunction is desirable; the span is not the thing itself.'
  instead: 'Render āyus as the four-fold union of body, senses, mind, and self, and keep the Sanskrit term.'
- term: 'biological life excluding consciousness'
  why: 'The biomedical object of medicine is the organism. The object of Āyurveda is the conjunction that includes mind and self as constituents, which is why psychology and conduct are internal to its medicine rather than adjacent specialties.'
- term: 'a longevity project'
  why: 'Longevity marketing optimizes the number. The classical frame asks what the extended time is a union OF, and grades life as hita or ahita, sukha or duḥkha: beneficial or harmful, happy or unhappy, an evaluative richness the number cannot carry.'
related:
- /concepts/svastha.md
- /concepts/manas.md
- /concepts/prakriti.md
- /concepts/prana-tejas-ojas.md
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Āyus -- आयुस्

**Not:** lifespan as a number, biological life excluding consciousness, a longevity project

## What It Actually Means

Āyus is the answer to the question what is Āyurveda the veda of. Charaka defines it in the opening chapter: life is the saṃyoga, the sustained conjunction, of four factors, the body, the senses, the mind (sattva), and the self (ātman). The definition is doing deliberate work: it makes consciousness a constituent of the medical object, not a complication of it. A medicine of āyus therefore must address conduct, cognition, and emotion as physiology, which is exactly what the rest of the system does, from prajñāpāradha as etiology to sattvāvajaya as therapy. Charaka immediately grades life on two axes, beneficial and happy, extending medicine into ethics. The corpus already treats ātman elsewhere (dharma-foundation v0.1, upanishadic-core v0.6, nyaya-vaisheshika v0.9, mimamsa-dharma v0.10); this bundle does not re-theorize it, it documents the medical fact that Āyurveda writes the self into the definition of life.

## Audience Metaphor

A chord is not any of its notes and not the seconds it rings; it is notes sounding together, and it ends when they stop sounding together. Āyus is life as chord: body, senses, mind, and self held in one sustained sounding, with medicine as the art of keeping the chord in tune, not merely long.

## Citations

1. Charaka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 1.42 defining āyus as the conjunction of body, senses, mind, and self -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
2. Charaka Saṃhitā Sūtrasthāna 1.41 on Āyurveda as the knowledge of beneficial and harmful life -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
