Research evidence today suggests that emotional immunity to negative states of mind may well be linked to physical immunity, even resistance to disease. A person who is even minded, who doesn’t get shaken if people speak ill of him or excited when they praise her to the skies – such a person, I submit, is a poor host for disease. That kind of inner toughness creates a protective buffer of what one researcher, Suzanne Kobasa, calls “hardiness”: enhanced resistance to illness and the everyday stress of daily life.

Eknath Easwaran