Veerya (potency)

The word Veerya means "manifested hidden power of the ingredient": after the ingredient has been consumed and absorbed, it will manifest its hidden powers and affect the tissues. Some ingredients heat the body and others are cooling. This is how it is, this is a given, it has to be kept in mind it will never be otherwise.

The heating ingredients are ginger, pepper, clove etc., the cooling ingredients are Brahmi, milk, pomegranate and others.

The term Veerya is very often used in Ayurvedic pharmaceutics and in healing the Doshas. Is is said that the Ayurvedic practitioner is the one who knows the Veerya ingredients and recognizes Doshas in patients. The Veerya of each ingredient (which was known when the scriptures were compiled) is precisely described in Ayurveda. The Veerya of the ingredients can be changed through various combinations and preparation processes. The Veerya of a given ingredient also depends on the quality, i.e., the climate of its production, the season of its production, the season of its harvest, its storage and it generally depends on the quality of the harvest.

We must remember that the concept of an essence/substance at the subtle level is different from the concept of something material at the gross material level. The mind perceives things that are material and can be perceived by the senses, while the essences/substances can only be perceived by buddhi, the intellect.  Every substance has its dharma, comprised of five ingredients: ras, vipak, veerya, prabhav, guny (characteristics).

One definition of the essence of something is the material that can obtained by producing a distillate - and the other has to do with the sprouting of a seed, which is a manifestation of its essence. A child is the essence of its parents. Essences create objects, are part of them, and can be extracted from them. If we understand the idea of "from", it includes the idea of movement, which is the characteristic of action. If we see this, then we understand that essences involve an enormous force that wants to manifest and causes change. This is a disruptive force that causes transformation. This hidden force is called in Sanskrit utkarṣat, manifestation, which is what the Veerya does.

There are two kinds of Veerya, either ushna (heating) or sheeta (cooling). This is the force that causes the effect of either cooling or heating. Each substance that creates something material has a Veerya. Whatever is produced from this substance will have an effect that depends on the Veerya, the potential/potency of that substance. All manifestations are simply results of their causes, it is a modified form of the causes. We can say that the Veerya is the cause of the prabhav. This is why it is important to understand what it is, because it determines the direction in which things will develop. 

When things are even, steady, uniform, it means they are equivalent to each other, equal, balanced, settled - it means there is stability. Maintaining stability can require constant adjustment depending on the fluctuation of other conditions. If there is no stability, then there is nothing but deviations. 

We can think of these as the winter and summer forces, the winter force is contraction and cold, the summer is heating, expansive, moving from the center outward.