Buddhism and Health
Once again the time has come to address the topic of Buddhism and health. Indeed health seems to be something of an obsession with many of us. I had a student who was constantly concerned about my health, not only mine but that of everyone in the class. I only needed to clear my throat sometime in the course of a two hour lecture to prompt a very concerned enquiry about my "cough" and offers of various and sundry cures. Now, I don’t doubt the good intentions of the person of whom I am speaking, but honestly, I doubt that there exists any lecturer in the world who does not occasionally clear his or her throat even if it’s just to buy a moment of time to reflect upon what one is going to say next. The point is that these repeated enquiries regarding my health and everyone else's, when they ceased to be a cause of amusement, only served to increase everyone’s hypochondria. Indeed, I found myself consciously trying to avoid clearing my throat during the course of my lectures for fear of provoking a new wave of concern about my non-existent cough.
Obviously, health is important, and no one would suggest that it be ignored or overlooked. If one is sick, it is very hard to carry out one’s daily responsibilities, to interact meaningfully with ones family and friends and in fact to get any happiness or enjoyment out of life at all. The Buddha recognised the importance of health when he made a sound constitution one of the principal assets required for the successful pursuit of spiritual accomplishments. He also did not fail to include medicine as one of the four requirements for an acceptable standard of living.
But let us keep things in perspective if possible. Very often our state of health depends very much on our state of mind. Even Napoleon, who was hardly a model of wisdom and compassion, but who was an astute observer of human nature and behaviour remarked that the spiritual component outweighed the material component of a person’s state of being and doing by a margin of three to two. In other words, how one felt and how one did was largely determined by ones state of mind. This observation has been repeatedly confirmed by modern science. If one is depressed, downhearted, disappointed, dissatisfied, angry or resentful, one is far more liable to be sick. On the other hand, if one is optimistic, cheerful content, satisfied and of good heart, one is far more likely to be healthy. Therefore, I find myself tempted to say once again that a positive attitude of mind is the best medicine for whatever ails us. The Buddha said that mental pain and physical pain are like the pain of two arrows. If we eliminate mental pain, even if we suffer physical pain, we have at least reduced our affliction by fifty percent which is not a bad result by any standards.
At this point, I cannot help but recall a study done a few years ago by an American scientific body on the state of health of the nation. The basic conclusion of the study was that although the American population was on the whole healthier than it had been twenty-five years earlier, most people felt sicker. This is hardly surprising if we take into account the fact that the American media constantly tell people that they are sick even if they may not be aware of it. I will never forget the advertisement which I heard repeatedly on American TV and radio when I last lived there in the late nineties. It went something like this, "Are you tired, despondent, discontented, depressed etc.? Then you may very well be suffering from syndrome X. Call immediately 1800xxxx". Believe me; I am not making this up; it is absolutely true.
I will now turn briefly to another big topic that we hear a great deal about nowadays. That is the topic of genetics. You have probably heard that most of our physical ailments are in fact genetic. It doesn’t matter how much fatty food or sugar you consume or whether you strictly avoid them, if you have a genetic disposition towards high cholesterol, high blood pressure or diabetes, you are going to get them anyway. It’s just a matter of your genes. So whatever we do or whatever happens to us is not our fault really - it’s just our genes!
Well, this may seem to be a great new discovery of modern science, but I ask you, where do are genes reside? Aren’t they in our bodies? And didn’t the Buddha say that our past karma resides in our bodies? So what are our genes except the seeds of our past Karma? The great advantage of Karma over genetic determinism is that in the case of Karma, we can change it ourselves. Maybe not entirely, maybe not immediately, but gradually over time and we can change the direction of our lives, now and in the future. So one more time, THE BUDDHA SAID IT ALL!