Mental Health among Italian Nichiren Buddhists: Insights from a Cross-Sectional Exploratory Study

Abstract

Religiosity/spirituality is generally considered as a powerful tool for adjusting and coping with stressors, attributing purposes and meanings (either existential/philosophical, cognitive, or behavioral ones) to daily situations and contexts. While studies generally investigate these effects in Judaism and Christianity believers, there is a dearth of data concerning oriental religions. We sampled from Italian Nichiren Buddhists, the most widespread branch of Buddhism in Italy (n = 391). Participants were Buddhists on average since 5 years and self-defined moderate practitioners. Adaptive strategies exhibited higher scores than maladaptive ones. Specifically, the adaptive strategy of active coping positively correlated with self-evaluated degree of being a practicing Buddhist, as well as positive reframing and religion, while maladaptive strategies such as use of substances, venting and behavioral disengagement correlated negatively. Only the subscale of religion correlated significantly and positively with the time from which the participant had become Buddhist, while the use of emotional support correlated negatively. Most participants had a predominantly internal locus of control. External locus of control negatively correlated with time the participant became Buddhist and the self-reported degree of being a practicing Buddhist, whereas internal locus positively correlated only with the latter variable. Furthermore, Buddhist participants exhibited a low psychopathological profile when compared with the normative scores.

Study of Structural Similarities between Tubulin, TMC1, and FtsZ Proteins as They Relate to Mechanosensory Transduction in the Context of the Orch OR Theory of Consciousness

“…Having observed no differences between Catholics and Atheists, the Authors concluded that what is determinant for the greater psychological resources of Buddhists, is the religious practice, that is the assiduous chanting of Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo and practice within a community of believers. Another study published in 2019 (Bragazzi et al 2019), was conducted on 391 practitioners of Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism in Italy; the results were consistent with those of the previous study. Buddhist subjects made use of adaptive coping strategies, had a predominant internal locus of control, and showed a low psychopathological profile when compared with the normative standard scores.…”

“…The word Nam derives from the Sanskrit word namas and means "devotion". Myoho-Renge-Kyo is the title of the Lotus Sutra in Japanese (The Major Writings 1979a;Watson, 1993;Giannini et al 2018;Bragazzi et al 2019). A simplified translation in English could be "Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra".…”

“…It could be therefore hypothesized that changes in electrolyte composition in the aqueous environment of the brain, with particular reference to decrease of chloride ions, as result of interaction with a 116 Hz sound (Hiratsuka and Imamura 2020), occur during chanting of Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo with consequent changes of cell depolarization patterns and synaptic transmission. The Solfeggio frequencies associated with chanting, on the other hand, may be responsible for a series of biological effects that may help explaining the increase in psychological resources described by Giannini et al (2018), andBragazzi et al (2019). It has been demonstrated that these frequencies have a positive impact on the human endocrine and autonomous nervous system (Akimoto et al 2018) and improve survival of human brain astrocytes in vitro (Babayi and Riazi 2017).…”

“…(B) Alpha-tubulin staining after the different 20-min sounds stimulation with a graph below representing ƒ(α) vs. α (the typical pattern for multifractals) and the results of the multifractal analysis reporting the average fractal dimension (D) and lacunarity (L).Figure and legend reproduced from Figure 1 of Dal Lin et al (2021) under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Figure 10, shows comparison of sound analysis of the phoneme of two syllables (mantra, left panel) used by Dal Lin et al (2021) with the hexameter chant (Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo; right panel) that has been studiedfor its association with psychological resources(Giannini et al 2018;Bragazzi et al 2019), and its effects on electrolytes(Hiratsuka and Wakae 2019;Hiratsuka and Imamura 2020).…”

On the Natural Intelligence and Consciousness of the Immune System and its Relationship with the Brain

“…Buddhism in Italy is the third most widespread and practiced religion, after Christianity and Islam. Among the different denominations, followers of Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism constitute the largest group with 75,000 members which is about half of the whole Italian community of Buddhist believers (Bragazzi et al, 2019). It is worth noting that Nichiren Daishonin Buddhism is a religion officially recognized by the Republic of Italy.…”