Is Buddhism good for your health? |
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Here are some extracts from the recent The New York Times magazine article on "Is Buddhism Good for your Health?", to encourage you to start meditating yourself! You can find out all about meditation and its many benefits in your own experience by coming along to our classes. In the three-page article of the same title in The New York Times magazine on Sept 14, the answer to the question "Is Buddhism good for your health?" is a resounding "Yes". "Researchers are making the case that Eastern-style meditation is good not just for your emotional well-being but also for your physical state." Moreover, as the article goes on, it becomes clear that -- unlike most other things that can help us -- meditation has not one single undesirable side-effect! This article is particularly striking because it is an oasis in the desert. Doesn't the adage, "No news is good news", seem especially true these days? All I seem to read in newspapers is cynical or negative or seemingly hopeless-the growing muddle and death toll in Iraq, the horror in Liberia, the growing gulf between the careless rich and the desperate poor, the crisis in unemployment, budget deficit, and healthcare, the silliness of election politics, the dangerous shadowy people still lurking all around us. Then this article comes along, and it is unqualifiedly positive, as have been a spate of recent articles about Buddhist meditation. Instead of feeling powerless in the face of global and even personal difficulties, it shows that through the tried and tested art of meditation we can actually seize control of our minds and lives. Through becoming more positive, compassionate, and wise as individuals, this in turn can affect our societies and even our world for the better: "In the 2,500-year history of Buddhism, the religion has directed its energy inward in an attempt to train the mind to understand the mental state of happiness, to identify and defuse sources of negative emotion and to cultivate emotional states like compassion to improve personal and societal well-being." The scientific researchers have been doing experiments on monks and other regular meditators, using electroencephalographic (EEG) recording equipment "to measure a remarkable, if seemingly evanescent, entity: the neural characteristics of the Buddhist mind at work." ".the neuroscientific study of Buddhist practices has crossed a threshold of acceptability as a topic worthy of scientific attention. Part of the reason for this lies in new, more powerful brain-scanning technologies that not only can reveal a mind in the midst of meditation but also can detect enduring changes in brain activity months after a prolonged course of meditation. And it hasn't hurt that some well-known mainstream neuroscientists are now intrigued by preliminary reports of exceptional Buddhist mental skills. Paul Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco and Stephen Kosslyn of Harvard have begun their own studies of the mental capabilities of monks. In addition, a few rigorous, controlled studies have suggested that Buddhist-style meditation in Western patients may cause physiological changes in the brain and the immune system." Experienced Buddhist meditators are referred to as "the Olympic athletes, the gold medalists'' of the mind. This is a good phrase as it shows on the one hand that regular meditation brings about the best we can be in terms of our mental potential. On the other hand, it implies that you cannot be satisfied that you have got as far as you're going to get after just a few weeks or months. In this age of instant experts, I have heard people brush off meditation with, "Oh, I know what meditation is all about. I tried it once for a few weeks." Although our mental "fitness" will start improving in a matter of weeks, and we'll find increased positivity, relaxation, and peace, we'll only effect the most profound and lasting changes in our mind if we persevere and train regularly over a period of years. Meditation needs to become a life-long good habit, every bit as much as physical exercise or healthy eating, the difference being that meditation takes us to a completely new place, as we start to untap the deep spiritual potential of our mind: ''You can think of the monks as cases that show what the potential is here,'' Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who has pioneered work in the health benefits of meditation, says. 'But you don't have to be weird or a Buddhist or sitting on top of a mountain in India to derive benefits from this." |
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