Everybody Wants To Rule The... [002]
“Among teens, 18 percent have fatty liver disease, close to 30 percent are prediabetic, and more than 40 percent are overweight or obese. Fifty years ago, pediatricians might go an entire career without seeing these conditions among their patients. Today, young adults exist in a culture where conditions such as obesity, acne, fatigue, depression, infertility, high cholesterol, or prediabetes are common.Six out of ten adults are living with chronic illness. About 50 percent of Americans will deal with mental illness sometime in life. Seventy-four percent of adults are overweight or have obesity. Rates of cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, upper respiratory infections, and autoimmune conditions are all going up at the exact time we are spending more and more to treat them. In the face of these trends, American life expectancy has been declining for the most sustained period since 1860.
We are convinced these increasing rates of conditions -- both mental and physical -- are part of being human. And we are told we can treat the increasing rates of chronic conditions with “innovations” from modern medicine. In the decades leading up to my mom’s cancer diagnosis, she was informed her rising cholesterol, waistline, fasting glucose, and blood pressure levels were conditions that she could “manage” for life with a pill.
But instead of isolated conditions, all of the symptoms my mom experienced leading to her death were warning signs of the same thing: dysregulation in how her cells were producing and using energy...
I want to share a vision of health that is big and bold. It predicates health and longevity on something simple, powerful, and absolutely fundamental. A single physiological phenomenon that can change almost everything about how you feel and function today and in the future. It’s called Good Energy, and the reason it has such a life-changing impact is that it governs the very essence of what (quite literally) makes you tick: whether your cells have the energy to do their jobs of keeping you nourished, clear-minded, hormonally balanced, immune protected, heart-healthy, structurally sound-and so much more. Having Good Energy is the core underlying physiological function that, more than any other process in your body, determined your predilection to great mental and physical health or to poor health and disease.”
From Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, by Casey Means MD, Calley Means, Introduction, X-XII.
“Monks, I lived in refinement, utmost refinement, total refinement. My father even had lotus ponds made in our palace: one where red lotuses bloomed, one where white lotuses bloomed, one where blue lotuses bloomed, all for my sake. I used no sandalwood that was not from Vārāṇasī. My turban was from Vārāṇasī, as were my tunic, my lower garments, & my outer cloak. A white sunshade was held over me day & night to protect me from cold, heat, dust, dirt, & dew.“I had three palaces: one for the cold season, one for the hot season, one for the rainy season. During the four months of the rainy season I was entertained in the rainy-season palace by minstrels without a single man among them, and I did not once come down from the palace. Whereas the servants, workers, & retainers in other people’s homes are fed meals of lentil soup & broken rice, in my father’s home the servants, workers, & retainers were fed wheat, rice, & meat.
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“Even though I was endowed with such fortune, such total refinement, the thought occurred to me: ‘When an untaught, run-of-the-mill person, himself subject to illness, not beyond illness, sees another who is ill, he is repelled, ashamed, & disgusted, oblivious to himself that he too is subject to illness, not beyond illness. And if I—who am subject to illness, not beyond illness—were to be repelled, ashamed, & disgusted on seeing another person who is ill, that would not be fitting for me.’ As I noticed this, the healthy person’s intoxication with health entirely dropped away.
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‘Subject to birth, subject to aging, subject to death, run-of-the-mill people are repelled by those who suffer from that to which they are subject. And if I were to be repelled by beings subject to these things, it would not be fitting for me, living as they do.’
As I maintained this attitude—- knowing the Dhamma without acquisitions—- I overcame all intoxication with health, youth, & life as one who sees renunciation as rest.
For me, energy arose, unbinding was clearly seen. There’s now no way I could partake of sensual pleasures. Having followed the holy life, I will not return.
From Refinement, or the Sukhamāla Sutta (AN 3:39), translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu and freely offered on dhammatalks.org.
Until next time & wishing you ease, B