Surge 78
CARING LOVE AND CARDIAC HEALTH
When we care for others and find ways to express our love for them, we make a great gift to ourselves. A physician1 has prescribed caring love as an aid to improve heart condition in his book titled How to Reverse and Prevent Heart Disease and Cancer. He refers to the story of John D Rockefeller who was extremely rich but came close to dying at the age of 53 because of ulcer and heart problems. The man had made his first million at the age of 33 and was a workaholic. Fear, anger, guilt, sadness and “phony love” in the “business as usual” way of dealing with people were among his mind-felt feelings. He suffered the misery of ill-health for about a year. A number of well wishers, compassionate care-takers and his wealth were not able to restore health to him. Then he suddenly decided to donate his wealth, establishing the Rockefeller Foundation and made many charitable gifts to people around the world. The result was unbelievable. He recovered completely and lived to be 98.
What an error many of us are committing! We read a lot and accumulate large amounts of information on right living. Some of us write books too and go places to give lectures. Our life however does not reflect our knowledge. We are like that man who had collected books like Critical Essays on Kalidasa and Bharavi but was not yet able to make simple sentences in Sanskrit . “Where is the wisdom that we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” laments the poet2. The joke3 goes that a psychotic believes 2 + 2 is 5; a neurotic knows 2 + 2 is 4 but does not like it. We are like the neurotic perhaps. We know a lot but do not like to do what is right. (The psychiatrist, if asked what is 2 + 2, says, “First pay my fees and then we will talk about 2 + 2.)
Caring love or unselfish concern for others, notes Dr. Naras Bhat, creates healing chemistry in the body. In childhood, all of us had a natural tendency to bond and love. We secreted chemicals like endorphin whenever we met people. Growing older, we treated each human contact with suspicion and competition. In our money-oriented society, we evaluated every new person from the perspective of economic gain or loss. Such judgmental feelings released more adrenaline and noradrenaline than endorphins. This led to habitual competitiveness and outright cynicism instead of trust and altruism4.
To get angry is to punish oneself for the fault of another, observed Swami Chinmayananda. We may adapt this wise saying to, “To care and love is to reward oneself despite others’ imperfections.” Learning to love is what life is all about5. It is definitely not about rituals, scholarship or emotionalism. “I do not believe in bending my body; I believe in straightening my mind,” is another witty remark by Chinmaya. He was highlighting the need for healthy outlooks and mature understanding in life in contrast to complex yoga postures that get undue importance in certain quarters. Teachers like Krishnamurti emphasized the importance of “being human” in contrast to being a Hindu or Muslim, a Democrat or a Republican. To be a human meant experiencing the humane qualities of love and compassion in our hearts. This was to take precedence over the emotions arising out of belonging to certain religious, political, ethnic or professional group.
There is no intelligence without compassion, said Krishnamurti. We are not only cruel to other people, animals or Nature but also to ourselves. Through our endless desires, we deny the basic need of seven hours of sleep to our own poor body every night. Through our ambitious psychology, we whip the body to slog and the poor thing does it all, most of the time. Alas it then gets a host of ailments by the age of 50 or 60. Let us be kind to our BMI (body, mind and intellect) and treat them with love and respect. They have their own dignity. When we do not misuse them but handle them with care, they remain healthy. So let us have a heart – towards others and towards ourselves – and our cardiac health is sure to get better.
Swami Chidananda, Varanasi
Gandhi Jayanti, Saturday, October 2, 2010
Notes:
1 Read How to Reverse and Prevent Heart Disease and Cancer by Dr. Naras Bhat, MD, FACP published by New Editions Publishing, California; pages 186 – 200.
2 T S Eliot in The Rock.
3 Humour in (and as) Medicine – Dr. K P Misra published in India by Rupa and Co.
4 op.cit. page 192
5 Compare this with Sri Aurobindo’s saying, “All life is Yoga”. (Synthesis of Yoga, page 8, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 2007)