---
type: Concept
bundle: ayurveda-consciousness
bundle_version: 0.11.0
id: rasayana
title: Rasāyana
iast: Rasāyana
devanagari: रसायन
description: 'Rejuvenation therapy: the discipline that renews tissue quality, strengthens agni, and builds ojas, including conduct itself as a rasāyana; NOT anti-aging supplements, NOT biohacking, NOT a product category.'
darshana:
- Āyurveda
text_source: Charaka Cikitsāsthāna 1
tags:
- rasayana
- rejuvenation
- ojas
- ayurveda
not:
- term: 'anti-aging supplements'
  why: 'The supplement frame keeps the substance and discards the system. Classical rasāyana is administered to a prepared body (after purification), within a disciplined regimen, at the right life stage, and its stated fruits include memory, luster, and clarity alongside tissue endurance. A bottle without the frame is not rasāyana in the classical sense.'
  instead: 'Render rasāyana as rejuvenative discipline, the path by which excellent rasa and the tissues it feeds are rebuilt, and keep the Sanskrit term.'
- term: 'biohacking'
  why: 'The optimization register treats the body as a device to be tweaked past its limits. Rasāyana aims at completeness of the normal: tissues formed at their best quality, fire steady, ojas full, faculties clear into age.'
- term: 'a product category'
  why: 'Marketplaces sell rasāyanas as a shelf. The texts most striking move runs the other way: ācāra-rasāyana, conduct as rejuvenative, truthfulness, non-violence, calm, cleanliness, and respect stated to work as rasāyana without any substance at all.'
related:
- /concepts/ojas.md
- /concepts/dhatu.md
- /concepts/agni.md
- /concepts/sadvritta.md
reception_note: 'Heavily commercialized as anti-aging. The file describes the classical discipline, includes no preparations or dosages, and makes no efficacy or product claims.'
timestamp: '2026-07-09'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Rasāyana -- रसायन

**Not:** anti-aging supplements, biohacking, a product category

## What It Actually Means

Rasāyana names the path (ayana) of the rasa, the nutrient stream: therapy that improves the quality of what the tissue chain is built from, so that every downstream dhātu forms at its best and the sequence completes into abundant ojas. Charaka devotes the opening of the Cikitsāsthāna to it, listing fruits that are cognitive as much as somatic: long life, memory, intelligence, health, youthfulness of luster and voice. The discipline is staged, classically given after purification, adjusted to constitution and age, and it explicitly includes ācāra-rasāyana, the rejuvenation of conduct: the person of truthfulness, compassion, cleanliness, and equanimity is said to receive the fruits of rasāyana without taking a single preparation. That teaching is the anti-supplement stated inside the tradition itself: the deepest tonic in the pharmacopoeia is a way of living. This file documents the concept and includes no preparations, doses, or protocols.

## Audience Metaphor

You can restore an old violin two ways: swap parts, or improve everything the instrument is continuously made of, the humidity it lives in, the hands that play it, the strings it is fed. Rasāyana is the second way applied to a body: not a part swapped in, but the whole supply and conduct of the instrument raised until the tone comes back.

## Citations

1. Charaka Saṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 1 on rasāyana and its fruits -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
2. Charaka Saṃhitā Cikitsāsthāna 1.4 on ācāra-rasāyana, conduct as rejuvenative -- see [references/charaka-samhita.md](../references/charaka-samhita.md)
