The scientific Buddhist on buddhist seniors living longer
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
For those of us who are a little older, here is an interesting article from a scientific viewpoint on how spirituality and community helps older people. Quite interesting.
Most studies reveal that spiritually-oriented adults live longer:
“People who attended religious services at least once a week were 46 percent less likely to die during the six-year study, says lead author Harold G. Koenig, M.D., of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. “When we controlled for such things as age, race, how sick they were and other health and social factors, there was still a 28 percent reduction in mortality,” he says.”
Increased survival can be attributed to a variety of established causes that alleviate tension and thereby lead to healthy health: connecting to a group or society, and feeling the value is in your existence.
Comments
It makes sense. People with a spiritual path tend to eat more healthily, and the various meditative practices have been shown to lower blood pressure.
The article mentioned this a bit, and without bothering to pull up the research myself, having strong social ties, associated with a spiritual community, does quite a bit for extending ones life.
Mother feels the anxiety of not being able currently, to nestle in the bosom of her mother church. She misses the serene loud silence of community worship....
Absolutely. Some churches here have been recording online services with just one singer because of the risk of infection. Very sad.
My experience, as well as that of my sister (also a Buddhist, living in a different city), is that Western dharma groups do not seem to create nearly as much a sense of community as other religions do, nor do they participate in helping each other out as much.
Perhaps the article is referring to immigrant groups from cultures where Buddhism is the status quo .. thse groupd do tend to have a cohesive sense of community, but it is hard to say how much of that is becaues they are all strangers in a strange land and how much of it is their common Buddhist background.
I am not sure that the length of a lifespan would be my measurement of health.
For those who see death as the enemy, that all ones cells dying in union is somehow more tragic than the state of sequential cell dying that we call life, that the struggles that we have forgotten of our arising is somehow holier than those struggles offered by our departures, that death is the failure of health, must inevitably suffer with the ending of life.
I wonder if there is better measurement for heath than the length of time one survives.
I totally agree... being able to walk the 10,000 steps daily, being able to ride a bicycle, having a sound memory and being able to file a tax return seem like good thresholds for physical and mental health.
What wonders did you come up with?
Mine: Be Well. Be Happy. Blessed Bee ...
An all encompassing heart, an ever widening state of mindfulness, manifestations of empathy/ sympathy/ equanimity/ compassion/ tenderness/ benevolence/ love/ wisdom/ harmlessness/ selflessness or some transcendence of sufferings cause, could all be much more interesting measurements of what true health might actually be.