He expressed through his noninsistence my right not to give him anything, and the little that I did give was simply my recognition of him as he was.  The more I write about this moment, the more I degrade it; for making it significant cannot but seem a pretension to generosity or superiority on my part, or at least a magnification of his deformity.  But the significance was precisely in the insignificance.  We saw each other; I gave; he accepted; we forgot each other.

Man, Vollmann is such an awesome writer and I feel grateful for all the feelings of empathy, acceptance and forgiveness that his book book is stirring up in me.  Somewhere inside “me” is a part that is really inspired by Vollmann … that wants to speak with the same empathy, clarity and attention to human dignity and emotion.

Is this part of “me” – my favorite part of who I am – partially encoded in my genome?  Genes to facilitate a deep desire for social connection and acceptance? Genes for helping me see clearly and honestly through all my cognitive biases and filters?  Genes that underlie my sense of fairness and trust?  These would be my favorite genes … ones that I would study in depth.

- I have 17 European alleles and 3 East Asian alleles … the genetic proof is in … white boys can’t jump.
- I have 17 out of 32 Type 2 Diabetes risk alleles … put down those carbs now … and 19 out of 30 Coronary Artery Disease risk alleles … and go for a jog.
- I have a combined Risk of Narcolepsy: 2.92 … but the score jumps to 85 with an issue of GENETICS in my hand.
- I’m not exactly on the leading edge of human evolution … a 72/110 of positive selection score.
- I’d better start saving for a long-ass retirement … probability of extreme longevity: 78.2

More on the interpretome here, here and here!

Image via Wikipedia

DNA methylation is THE key driver of epigenetic regulation.  Where goest CpG methylation, then followest chromatin remodelling … NOT the other way around.

“The heritability of genomic methylation patterns clearly shows that once established, DNA methylation is dominant over chromatin modifications.”

Some neurodevelopmental processes (here) seem to depend on DNA methylation, but, is this the main purpose of all this methylation?

Nope.

Our genome is a huge junk pile.  That’s right … we are built from a genome, of which some 40%, are old retroviruses, transposons and other broken legacies of foreign DNA that inserted themselves into the genomes of our mammalian ancestors.  These ancient viruses can be very dangerous and wreak havoc if they are allowed to be transcribed.  DNA methylation helps keep this from happening.  Its a HUGE job … some 60% of all CpG’s are methylated … likely THE main purpose of DNA methylation.

“The lack of cell-type-specific methylation at either enhancers or promoters indicates that DNA methylation is likely to have a negligible or very small role in development, and that the methylation changes seen at some low-CpG promoters are likely to be a result of transcriptional activation rather than a cause.”

“The data indicate that the bulk of the genome is methylated as the default state, and unmethylated regions are protected from a promiscuous DNA methylating system by a combination of very high CpG densities and histone modifications and variants that repel DNA methyltransferase complexes.”

So, we must keep in mind when reading the epigenetic literature (a methyl group here or there contributes to less anxiety) that there is a much more vital process happening (ie., lack of a methyl group here or there can lead to a lethal viral attack). Occasionally, in the process of keeping us alive, our physiological systems can make life difficult.  C’est la vie!

Also, it appears that methylation is like an enormous fire-hose spraying methyl groups everywhere in the genome to dampen the ground and prevent any small fires (viruses) from igniting. How much stock can you put in research findings that hinge on the appearance/disappearance of 1 or 2 errant methyl groups?

If you’ve ever watched Steve Martin’s movie “The Jerk“, you may chuckle at the notion of having a “special purpose”.

Nevertheless, you may have wondered about your own special purpose … what are YOU meant to do?  What are some things that give meaning to YOUR life – you know – social connections (having friends and family)?, a sense of purpose (changing the world)?  a sense of self-control (earning a good wage, being healthy and having a modest home)?  satisfaction that comes from a sense of mastery (playing piano sonatas, perfecting yoga poses)?

Yes, yes, yes and yes … according to this research … these are avenues well worth exploring … keep going!!

Ask your genome, however, and it will surely give you a different answer.  By genome, I mean the long chemical strings of A, G, T, C’s that encode the machinery that constitute YOU – your brain and body.  It may have a different agenda.

The biochemical problem for the genome is that it is so damn unstable.  The long string of A, G, T, C’s has an unfortunate chemical tendency to want to break, slip, loop, slide and in so many other ways come unhinged.  We call this process mutation – and for the most part – its something that f**ks up the lives of perfectly good organisms.  Damn genome instability!

What’s a genome to do?  Apparently, one solution to this problem of mutation and the unfortunate load of mutations that can accumulate within an organism or population of organisms, is to exchange one’s DNA with other similar (but non-mutated) stretches of DNA.  Just ‘cut’ out one stretch and ‘paste’ in another, just like you might ‘cut and paste’ a revised paragraph into an essay you are writing.  No problemo!  Now all those deleterious mutations can no longer continue to pile up in the genome, since they can be cut out, and then new bits of DNA pasted in.  This process is known as genetic recombination.  In humans this process takes place in the reproductive system … its hypothesized to be the reason that sex evolved in the first place.

Yes, the genome loves sex!  It uses genetic recombination (which necessitates having male and females who want to get it on) to lower the load of deleterious mutations.  What a selfish genome we have (although I’m not complaining)!

OK, so happiness research tells us that we need to have friends, self-direction, purpose, mastery etc …  and the genome tells us we need to have (ahem) sex.  So who’s right?

Check out this article  “Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study” (referencing “Measuring the Quality of Experience”, Princeton University, 2003).

… among a sample of 1000 employed women, that sex is rated retrospectively as the activity that produces the single largest amount of happiness. Commuting to and from work produces the lowest levels of happiness. These two activities come top and bottom, respectively, of a list of 19 activities.

Hmmm.  Are we a whole lot less sophisticated that we want to admit?  Perhaps.  Its not a simple answer, but interesting to think that amidst all the effort we make to attain health, close relationships, security, inner-peace, etc … at the end of the day … we just want to have sex.

As a biologist, I’d like to explore the mental and physical transformations that occur when one practices (and practices) yoga and meditation – so perhaps a place to begin this exploration is with a scientific hypothesis about the WHY, that in some ways might be testable insofar as it might point to certain mental and physical processes – which themselves – might function as targets or recipient processes that are engaged in the course of practice (the HOW).

As a humble start, here is one such hypothesis suggested by the biologist E. O. Wilson which is reviewed in the essay entitled, “The Biological Roots of Religion: Is Faith in Our Genes?” by Morton Hunt.  Some highlights:

Religion thus met the newly evolving human need to understand and control life. Religion serves the same purposes as science and the arts – “the extraction of order from the mysteries of the material world,” as Wilson puts it – but in the prescientific era there was no other source of order except for philosophy, which was comprehensible only to a favored few and in any case was nowhere nearly as emotionally satisfying as religion.

Still another major function of religion was to act as a binding and cementing social force. I quote Wilson again: “Religion is … empowered mightily by its principal ally, tribalism. The shamans and priests implore us in somber cadence, Trust in the sacred rituals, become part of the immortal force, you are one of us.” Religious propitiation and sacrifice – near-universals of religious practice – are acts of submission to a dominant being and dominance hierarchy.

For all these reasons, says Wilson, “Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving.” The human mind evolved to believe in the gods even as religious institutions became built-ins of society.

And so, to sum up the sociobiological theory of the roots of religion: genetically built into early human beings was a set of mental, emotional, and social needs that caused culture to develop in certain ways – including the development of various religions – and caused culture, reciprocally, to favor and select for evolution those human traits that provided sociocultural advantages to the individuals possessing them. “Religion,” says Burkert, “follows in the tracks of biology … [and] the aboriginal invention of language … yield[ing] coherence, stability, and control within this world. This is what the individual is groping for, gladly accepting the existence of nonobvious entities or even principles.”

The picture above is a seal unearthed in the 5,000-year-old Mohenjo-daro excavation, showing a human-like form sitting in a yogic pose.

Am having a great time reading David Gordon White‘s  The Alchemical Body (here also)  – an incredibly in-depth exploration into the interplay of yoga with spirituality,  alchemy and the local political economics of India from 1,500 years ago and even earlier.

Man, there is just so much to learn about the early history of yoga and the origins of the rituals and practices of today.

One basic and central theme that emerges early in the book is that ancient religious practices are rooted in a fundamental notion of “body-world”, “spirit-world” and various “in-between” or “transitionary” states.   This 3-fold view of the world is rather universal to human cultures and perhaps extends very far back in human history – perhaps emerging early in our evolutionary tree as humans/neanderthals evolved a mental capacity to recognize and contemplate their own mortality.  For instance, evidence for religious behavior and burial rites reach as way far back as 300,000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic seems to suggest that early humans acknowledged “something” beyond the physical earthy body.

So it seems that the concepts I personally contemplate in my own practice – my inner self, reaching for a deeper connection to something beyond, etc. – are the very same issues that our ancient ancestors struggled with as well. Clearly the contemplative practices – like those borne out in yoga are old – Mohenjo-daro old – which makes it hard to know their ancient history.  In some way though,  it feels wonderful to partake in this very old, very primal tradition – to push my gaze inward as humans have been trying to do for millennia.

With a recognition of our mortality in mind, many contemplative and religious practices – just like yoga – are very much centered around making transitions or connections from the earthly body to the more pure and immortal spirit world.  White points out that for millennia, one universally intuitive way that humans would make such bridges was via ritualized sacrifices.  By offering animal, blood or other types of sacrifices to spiritual beings, early human cultures attempted to open a connection, offer appeasement or other intermediate linkage with the spirit world.

Interestingly, what seems to have happened at some point on the way to our modern yoga is that ritualized sacrifice morphed from the outward slaughter of an animal to an inward-looking type of self-sacrifice.  From Chapter 1 of TAB:

Within a few centuries of the composition of [the Satapatha Brahmana], a revolution in Indian thought would issue into the notion that humans too could internalize the sacrifice and thereby entirely bypass the mechanism of external sacrifice.  This inward turn, which would ground the entire gnostic and nondualist project of the Upanisads, also sowed the seeds for the innovation of a body of techniques for internal bodily transformation – i.e. for the practice of hatha yoga.

And from Chapter 9:

Of vital importance to the yogic tradition is the fact that the sacrificial fires in question are gathered together in one’s body.  There they serve as both a cremation pyre – by which the now-obsolete mundane, social body is shown to have truly died to the world – and, in the post-crematory existence of the sannyasin (the “renouncer”), as the seat of sacrifice, which has now been internalized.  It is here, in the inner fires of tapas, which fuel the offerings of one’s vital breaths in the inner sacrifice known as the pranagnihotra, that the practice of yoga very likely had its theoretical origins.

So perhaps at a very deep, very primal level, my yoga practice is a type of sacrifice – an ancient, hopeful attempt to make a connection with a spirituality or something larger and more everlasting than my flabby, aging body.  To recognize – most poignantly during “corpse pose” – that I am mortal, but wish not to be so.

Just a few excerpts from a lecture by the renown social psychologist Paul Ekman who is known for his work on the biology of human emotion.  Here he relates conceptual bridges between the writings of Charles Darwin and HH The Dalai Lama.  Ekman notes that both Darwin and HH The Dalai Lama intuit the existence of an organic natural source of compassion wherein humans are compelled to relieve the suffering of others so that the discomfort we feel when seeing others in pain can be relieved.  HH The Dalai Lama further suggests that these emotions are spontaneous, but compassion can be enhanced through PRACTICE!

Seems that science and ancient traditions can have a fascinating way of re-informing each other.