Epigenetics, the baton passed down through generations of humanity: Unlocking the key to the future we build every day.
I once believed in transformation through thought. The idea that changing your mindset could change your life was appealing, and I held onto that belief for many years. I felt this inadequacy most acutely when I was completely exhausted, both mentally and physically.
I wanted to learn how to receive a golden shower of energy from the universe, purify negative thoughts, and release them, so I read books, joined communities, and watched YouTube videos. The key phrase I learned was, “Let go 🕊️”
I realized that changing my lifestyle or way of thinking didn’t make the fatigue disappear. Changing my mindset didn’t restore my energy. Even changing my perspective didn’t alleviate the feeling that what seemed like a psychological problem was actually a biological one.
What Actually Changes
DNA itself doesn’t change through our daily choices. Our genes remain largely static. But something else does change, constantly, throughout our lives: how those genes are expressed. This is epigenetics.
Epigenetic changes are modifications to the chemical tags sitting on top of DNA—methyl groups, histone modifications—that control whether a gene turns on or off. Meditation studies show measurable epigenetic shifts within weeks.
Chronic stress alters epigenetic patterns. Diet, sleep, repeated patterns of attention—all of these leave physical traces in how our genes express themselves. The insight that stopped me in my tracks was this: I am not a fixed entity. At the cellular level, I am constantly being rebuilt. Not in a metaphorical sense, but literally, physically. Every single day.
This concept is similar to the Buddhist concept of impermanence.
The Architecture of Continuity
Our nervous system is always doing something specific: it’s trying to minimize surprise.
It’s generating predictions about what comes next, comparing those predictions to what actually happens, and updating its models based on the gap between expectation and reality. This is predictive coding. And it means our brain isn’t passively receiving information about the world—it’s actively anticipating it, constantly.
The practical consequence: your nervous system loves patterns. It loves returning to what’s familiar. The habits you’ve formed, the thought loops our repeat, the emotional responses you default to—these all exist because your brain has optimized around them. It doesn’t matter whether these are good habits or not.
They feel natural because they are natural to our neural architecture. Our neural system tries to minimize prediction error. So when we step outside familiar patterns, we create internal friction. The brain resists. It wants to return to what it already understands.
I noticed this in myself: a pull toward gravitating back toward what I already knew, toward what required no recalibration. Even when those familiar patterns exhausted me.
1. The Superiority of “Process” Over “Thought”
The experience that “simply changing your way of thinking is insufficient” is scientifically sound. From the perspective of the entire nervous system, conscious thought (processing in the prefrontal cortex) is merely the tip of the iceberg. True transformation at the cellular level, brought about by epigenetic changes and synaptic pruning, is facilitated by repetitive, body-wide neurobiological processes rooted in emotions.
- Thought: Like applying a patch to a software application. Often, it only has superficial and temporary effects.
- Repetitive neurobiological processes: Like updating the OS kernel or reconfiguring the hardware. It brings about permanent and physical changes to neural circuits.
The Gap Between Thought and Change
What I’ve experienced through observation is this: thinking about a pattern and changing that pattern are two completely different things. We can intellectually understand that we revert to our familiar default state. We can even clearly understand the mechanisms behind it. Yet, our nervous system still tries to pull us back to that default state, because that’s how the nervous system works.
The nervous system is designed to optimize predictability. This is why the phrase “changing your thinking changes your life” often fails. Thinking is only one layer.
But beneath thinking lies the actual foundation: the nervous system’s predictive mechanisms—the functions of predicting, resisting, reverting to default, and habituation. True change requires the nervous system itself to perceive something different, repeatedly and over time.
Our cells are rebuilt daily based not on what we think, but on what we actually do. They are rebuilt not on what we believe about our experiences, but on what we actually experience. The nervous system is updated through lived experience—the moment-by-moment unfolding of sensations, emotions, and the quality of attention.
Redefining “Habit” as “Cellular Conservatism”
Reframing the tendency to revert to familiar patterns not as a personal flaw, but as a biological survival strategy (homeostasis), is a crucial turning point. This shift in perspective clearly reveals the brain’s drive for energy efficiency as an observable phenomenon.
- Psychological interpretation: “I’ve made the same mistake again” (self-criticism).
- Biological interpretation: “My nervous system is repeating known patterns to conserve energy and ensure survival” (observation).
Adopting this biological perspective allows us to create a compassionate distance between our identity and our bodily functions. Instead of viewing ourselves as “broken” or “failures,” we can see ourselves as highly optimized systems where natural functions are operating.
Buddhist Paragraph Addition – “Anicca and the Architecture of Mind”
Buddhism recognized something 2,500 years ago that neuroscience is only now confirming. Neuroscientist Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a leading researcher in the neurobiology of meditation, has noted that ==”science is finally catching up with Buddhism.”== Impermanence—or anicca—is not a philosophical abstraction. It’s the fundamental structure of consciousness itself.
The Buddhist understanding of anicca doesn’t mean “everything is sad and temporary.” It means something more precise: there is no fixed, unchanging self. What we experience as a continuous “I” is actually a rapid sequence of moments, each arising and passing away.
Buddhist cognitive science—the systematic study of how mind and perception actually function—maps this directly onto what neuroscience now calls predictive coding and neural plasticity.
One of mankind’s roles is for each individual to continually reshape their epigenetic expression through lived experience, across all aspects of life.
The Pali Canon describes Vipassana (insight meditation) as directly observing this impermanence.
It is not a matter of faith, but a recognition based on lived experience.
It involves observing thoughts arising and disappearing, sensations appearing and fading away, and the constant changes that constitute consciousness. Modern neuroscience confirms that this is precisely what is happening at the neural level. Epigenetic markers change, gene expression is updated, and cells are literally changing moment by moment.
Scientific similarities between Shunyata (emptiness) and Anatta (non-self)
One of the central insights of Buddhism is that there is no fixed, permanent self. Impermanence (anicca) and non-self (anattā) represent the reality that identity is not a stable object but an ongoing process. Modern research in epigenetics is moving in a similar direction. We now understand that the human body is not locked into a static genetic blueprint. Although DNA provides structure, gene expression is continually shaped by experiences such as stress, rest, attention, behavior, and interaction with the environment.
From this perspective, the self is not a complete being encoded at birth.
Objective Biological Markers
Historically, the effects of meditation were evaluated primarily through subjective self-report. More recent research has examined these effects using measurable biological markers.
- Inflammatory Gene Expression: Meditation and related contemplative practices have been associated with reduced expression of stress-induced, pro-inflammatory genes, suggesting modulation of inflammatory signaling pathways. (Kaliman et al., 2014; Bhasin et al., 2013)
- Telomere Regulation: Psychological stability and stress reduction have been linked to increased telomerase activity, a mechanism involved in maintaining telomere length and cellular integrity. (Epel et al., 2009; Schutte & Malouff, 2014) These findings do not constitute evidence of “enlightenment.” They indicate, however, that contemplative practices can correspond with quantifiable changes in biological regulation.
The future we build
Epigenetics teaches us humility. The future is not determined only by our thoughts. It is formed by the things you do repeatedly every day, your experiences, and our attention. We need to be careful with every choice we make. Every moment you are actually feeling something rather than managing it. Every time I step out of my comfort zone, despite my nervous resistance. These are not poetic choices. They are epigenetic selections. They are rewriting the expression of our cells. This is how we build our future. We build our future not through willpower or positive thinking, but through the cumulative weight of our lived experiences, cell by cell.
Living is a process of design. We remain unfinished, continuously renewing our cells, doing the best we can in each moment, and passing that momentum on to those who come after us.
Rie
DriftLens team
