my buddhist blog number 49

Hi Everybody,

Herbert Benson is an eminent professor of Medicine at Harvard. He has a world wide reputation for the range and quality of his research, and he happens to have a particular interest in the role of religious belief in human well-being. In the 1990's for example he carried out substantial series of studies on the effects on health and general well-being of a wide range of religious beliefs. The results were set out in his detailed account, Timeless Healing: The Power and Biology of Belief. His conclusions essentially were that many forms of prayer, arising from belief, can have a powerfully beneficial effect on critical physiological factors such as lower blood pressure, stable heart rates and heightened immune systems. More recent research might be described as going even further, it actually looks at the effect of chanting and meditation on the way in which particular genes in a number of oindividuals' DNA were switched on or off. So it delves if you like into the very basis of our humanity.

Very briefly, the research group was quite small, some 26 volunteers, a key factor being that none of them had any previous experience of chanting or meditation. Initially Benson and his colleagues carried out an analysis of the complete genomes of all 26, and then they were all taught a brief 20 minute routine of chanting and breathing rhythmically, and ' emptying the mind. ' The volunteers then proceeded to carry out that routine, that practice if you like, every day for the following 8 weeks.

At the end of that time the genomes of all the volunteers were re-analysed. The results were quite startling. As the report in the scientific journal New Scientist expresses it,

' Clusters of beneficial genes had become more active and harmful ones less so. '

The specific ' beneficial ' effects were related to the energy efficiency of cells, the level of insulin production, which improves control of blood sugar, and certain effects of ageing. The clusters of genes that became less active were associated with chronic inflammation, which can lead to high nblood pressure and heart disease.

So, the process of chanting not only creates what we might call emotional space. So that if we find ourselves in a troubling or challenging situation, by chanting about it, it becomes possible to clear the mind to some extent, so that we can respond to that situation in  a more positive and creative way, rather than simply reacting to it impulsively. But it would seem from Professor Benson's research, that the process of regular chanting can be a truly re-vitalising and re-energising a ctivity. That has always been part of the practitioners experience, and that experience now receives very considerable support from this extraodinary piece of research, that has only been made possible of course, because of the huge advances in our understanding of genetics.

I have to say I found that research absolutely fascinating. And without in any way overstating it, undoubtedly generally supportive of the benefits arising from the basic Buddhist practices of meditation and chanting. Next time around we look at what we chant for.

See you then.
Good reading,
William