'Ren' and health

I had the chance to listen to a Chinese physician who talked about the relationship between human behaviour and mental condition known as 'wu chang' and our health.

I shall relate here the first element of 'wu chang', namely 'ren' or benevolence and its relationship with health as pointed by the said physician.

Ren is related to spring, wood, and liver. In this case, being benevolent helps to maintain the proper functioning of the liver. The opposite of benevolent is angry, demanding, ever want to win and so on. When liver is affected it will manifest in the eyes exertenally. The physician related his own experience of being very demanding and wanting to win in every exam while he was young. This mental state affects the liver causing him to suffer from shortsightedness.

The physician also quoted his clinical case about a girl who suffered from a tumour on the throat area. When he quesioned the mother, she was found to be a stubborn and ever-want- to- win girl. Once a car overtook her and she raced it and overtook in return. Hence the physican asked her to change his attitude by training to be benevolent and the best place to start is at home. He recommended she helped her mother to do all the housework and change her ever-want-to-win character. She listened to him and a week later, when she came to him again, it was found that the tumour had shrunk considerably much to the surprise of the doctor in a hospital she went to for ultrasound imaging.

The physician also mentioned an experiment done by a scientist in Stanford University on the exhaled gas collected from people who were very angry and those who were very sad. When the first type of gas goes through an indicator liquid, it turns purple while the second type of gas turns it grey. Later the scientist injected the liquids to white mice, they died. It showed that both gases were very toxic. Hence when we are angry, we produce toxic gases. I still can recall a talk by a policeman who talked on Buddhism. He said that in ancient China, there was a case of a baby who was breastfed by an angry mother died because the milk contained toxin because of her anger.

According to western doctors, when a person is angry, the energy spent is the same as that of running 3000 metres. Hence an angry man who feel tired. Furthermore, his face will be green because of the toxic gas produced and his hands will be cold because of pure circulation of blood.

Hence be compassionate all the time and refrain from anger and your liver will be in tiptop condition.