God gives the wise their wisdom
and scholars their knowledge.
To them He reveals
deep and mysterious things.
Daniel 2:21-23
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The Karma of Epigenetics

The complementary teaching of
Christ, the Buddha and Modern Science

Evolution is a cause and effect process that uses competition and adaptation to select, perfect and replace individuals and species.

Evolution uses the biochemistry of our emotions as they effect our thoughts and our bodily sensations to direct us to do what our ancestors did to survive and reproduce.

Evolution uses a spectrum of behaviors to carry out its genetic imperative to multiply to the maximum.

The emotions for these behaviors are important in the 'karma of epigenetics' which brings the Buddha's teaching of Mindfulness into our scientific age.

The genes in our DNA have the potential for everything in our evolutionary heritage.
~ Love, reproduction, nurturing, attachment and protection
~ Fear, greed and violence.
~ Curiosity, courage, and creativity.

Our epigenetic programming controls which genes are turned on and off. This programming is inherited from our parents and through them from our ancestors. Our epigenetic programming is adjusted throughout our lives by circumstances, by our emotions, thoughts and actions, and by the unteractive influence other people have

We can now equate our epigenetics with what the Buddha called our karma. In his original secular teachings, karma is the influence our lives have on the future. Reincarnation was not a part of the Buddha's original secular teaching and until the modern science of epigenetics there was no way to explain his conecpt of karma.

We can use the Buddha's secular, self-help instructions for a life of moderation and self-control to have a serene mind, compassion, and a good influence on the future beyond our own lives.


The Buddha's Mindfulness in modern science

The Buddha's way to prevent us from spontaneously saying, doing and thinking things that are harmful and we regret, has been explained and validated by the new scientific research on the preconscious.

Our emotions can trigger programmed spontaneous words, actions and thoughts from our preconscious before we are consciously aware of what we are saying, doing and thinking.

We need these preconscious sponeous reactions for things like driving a car. A fast reaction time is essential in sports. Athletes mentally practice their reactions program them in their preconscious. But these spontaneous reactions can also end friendships, destroy careers, and do great harm when they involve a gun.

The Buddha said we must always be aware of and have control over emotions that could have us speak and act spontaneously in a harmful way, and put our minds in a loop of harmful thoughts. Mindfulness equires that we:

1) Learn the thoughts and situations that evoke emotions that trigger hatmful words, actions and thoughts.

2) Learn to recognize how the onset of emotions feel in the body.

3) Be continually aware of the body's sensations that are from emotions that will trigger unwanred words, actions and thoughts.

4) Learn how to redirect emotions that will trigger unwanted words, actions and thoughts.

This practice, called Mindfulness, is gaining in popularity around the world.

True Mindfulness involves a lifetime of:

1) Learning the situations and thoughts that evoke emotions.

2) A continual awareness of the sensations emotions are having in the various parts of the body.

3) The ability to redirect dangerous emotions before they can cause harmful words, actions and thoughts.

The essence of the Buddha's teaching

The Buddha's Truths are that all life includes suffering and sorrow, but we can minimize the suffering we inflict on ourself and others, and maximize our own and other's happiness, through cultivating the good that is in us and eliminating the hinderaces to that goodness, so we can have a serene mind and a compassionate peaceful life.

The Buddha began life 2400 years ago as pampered prince, Siddartha Gaytama, in what is now southern Nepal. He left his life of luxury to become a cold, hungry, homeless ascentic unsccessfully seeking a solution to the suffering in life from the various religious teachers in northern India.

One day he realized that happiness was not in his life of luxuries as a prince, nor in the deprivations of his life as an ascetic, but in the Middle Way of being content with enough, not craving what cannot be satisfied, and not clinging to what cannot last.

Four centuries later, Jesus, the annointed Christ, also spoke of being content with enough. Jesus said that only by loving God and other people, could we have peace and justice in the world.
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In the original teachings of the Buddha, there was was no god, religious ceremonies, reincarnation, heaven, or metaphysics. The Buddha originally focussed on the individual, but in the tolerance of northern India at that time, his teachings were widely accepted, and the royal and wealthy built monasteries for his followers.

Over the centuries, philosophies and religions were created from the teachings of the Buddha and statues made of him that people prayed to

The Buddha said to only accept from teachings, including his own, what makes sense to you, only use what is useful for you, and only for as long as it is useful.

In The Buddha's parable of leaving the boat behind after reaching the far side of the river, The Buddha was saying that his students should go beyond him

The Buddha said he was just an ordinary human and anyone could achieve the enightenment he had by using his instructions, as a start.

For the Buddha, two hinderances to a serene mind are cravings that can not be satisfied and clinging to what cannot last.

In our culture of continual consumption, we become posessed by our possessions that clutter our lives and overflow our landfills.

We can become slaves to fickle approval in the social media and, if celebrities can be in continual fear of the voraceous public media, that mercilessly turns people into human click-bait

We can be on the side of the Holy Spirit bringing wisdom and loving kindness into our world, which is being destroyed by evolution's greed, fear, and hate.

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