This article was written by the friend of many, Shobhna Chandaria, of London.

She is known to many within our newsletter family, as “Tejas”. Tejas is a kind and friendly lady of elegance and education. As a wonderful friend, great yoga teacher, and invaluable aid to Swami Veda, she has traveled far and wide serving all who come into her life.

This photogenic and happy, multitalented friend has written the article below at the request of Swami Veda for us to enjoy...

         Newsweek of Sept.22 2008, pp. 62-63, had an article titled

 

 

                   “My Mother’s case of Pleasant Dementia”

                                      by Sara Davidson

 

, the author of “Leap! What Will We Do with The Rest of Our Lives?” and “Loose Change”.

The article presents a touching story of Sara Davidson’s mother developing a pleasant temperament as her dementia progressed.

The author then presents an interesting hypothesis to examine : Whether this state of pleasant dementia could be considered similar to  the goals of meditation practice such as equanimity and living in the ‘now’.

I am not a neurologist, doctor or writer but I am a meditation practitioner and a certified yoga teacher. As such I would like to add a few comments to the hypothesis presented by Sara Davidson. The comments may not be directly related to each other but are relevant to Sara Davidson’s presentation.

(1) (A) Our family is of the Jaina Religion which was founded by Mahavira, senior contemporary of the Buddha. The religion has not become as widely known as Buddhism because of its extreme piety and asceticism. The lay followers, among other tenets, undertake practices of fasting, silence, confession, seeking forgiveness, and nonviolence. They practice vocal and mental recitation of sutras and mantras in the course of their daily worldly life. These mantras become ingrained in their consciousness.

My mother, 85 years old, widowed many decades ago, is known for her even temperament and a pleasant nature from the beginning. She  has led an extremely pious life following the Jaina tenets. The sutras and mantras have become ingrained in her consciousness.

According to our family physician, she is  showing signs of the initial stages of dementia. For example, she forgets having visited my sisters. Sometimes she does not know  a very familiar person calling on the phone. In such moments of lapses, even on the phone, she is heard involuntarily reciting the Jaina  sutras and mantras.  Later she does not remember having done so.

May we conclude that the mantras thus ingrained in one’s consciousness could go beyond the reach of dementia? Perhaps, up to certain stages of the dementia? Do they replace the lost conscious memories of events?

(B) It is known that a person suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease may enjoy a few seconds of happiness and some memory associations if someone sings to them the songs they used to hear in childhood (vide, Newsweek, same issue, interview with Dr. Carl Salzman, p.67). Could the involuntary recitation of sutras and mantras be related to this phenomenon of connecting with childhood songs?

(C) My meditation guide ( not a Jaina) is known to his many thousand students for his serene temperament and practice of equanimity in the presence of the causes of excitation and agitation.

He tells me that one of the many practices he has mastered is mental recitation of a 700-verse Sanskrit text to fill any otherwise idle moments of the day as well as  the time of falling asleep (when most people undergo involuntary reveries) and that the mental recitation continues even during the shallow or REM sleep replacing the dreams.

He is known for producing any of the alpha, theta, or high beta brain waves using different meditation methods but is yet to undertake an EEG test during sleep at his Ashram’s laboratory.

It would be interesting to discover any neuronal connection between  the phenomena of (a) above referenced childhood songs and (b) my mother’s involuntary recitation of sutras and mantras during lapses of memory and alertness.

Could the same phenomena  at some neuronal level be connected to my meditation guide’s textual mnemonics during certain phases of sleep?

(2) As to the question of similarities between the ‘pleasant dementia’ and  the serenity and equanimity of an advanced meditation practitioner, there are some areas in which the two are obviously distinct.

(A) In the case of dementia the pleasantness is involuntary and unconscious; in the case of a meditation practitioner it is consciously cultivated through the practice of calmness (Pali samatha, Sanskrit shamatha) as part of a moral code (Pali sila, Sanskrit shila) that involves such mental endeavours as universal amity (in Buddhist texts, metta, in Patanjali’s Yoga-sutras maîtri).

(B) In dementia, however pleasant, the mental phenomena are results or correlates of the dying of the neurons and shrinking of the brain.

A meditation practitioner regenerates his/her brain cells within the context of what is now known as neuroplasticity.

It is known that an advanced meditation practitioner’s brain exhibits aging processes much more slowly. For example, my meditation guide is reaching the age of 76 but his MRI brain scans show that his brain is within the age group of 52-55.

Briefly put, in meditation there is freedom of will and in pleasant or unpleasant dementia an involuntary helplessness.