Goal Of Meditation Research Articles

Freedom of the mind

OPINION article Front. Psychol., 27 August 2013Sec. Perception Science https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00538

Meditation and Positive Mental Health

health is an important part of a person's life besides physical, spiritual and financial well being. It is believed that a healthy mind is major source to an individual attaining satisfaction in life. The world health organization (WHO) reported (2003) Mental health as an individual's state of well-being when he realizes his abilities, as the ability to cope with normal stresses of life, to work productively and fruitfully and can contribute to his community. health means a harmonious working of the mind, which results in well adjusted personality. Mcdaid (2007) pointed out that mental health problems are highly prevalent in our society, onset occurs at a much younger age in comparison to other disease and they have detrimental effect on various aspects of people's life. health is responsible for poorer economic, social and health outcomes. Barry and Jenkins (2007) reported healthier life style, few problems in daily living, greater productivity, better relationship, professional success and quality of life depends on the presence of positive mental health.If we give proper attention and care towards mental illness at initial stage, it can be cure. There are number of psychological techniques which help to elevate mental problems. Depression, stress, anxiety, emotional instability, psychosomatic disorders, behavioural problems and so many other problems can be resolves/manage through psychotherapy. Meditation is one of the psychotherapeutic methods of ancient time to get positive mental health.Meditation is not used for only religious purposes. It may also be used to relax or calm, give peace to a person's soul. Some doctors prescribe meditation instead of pain killer or drugs to relax a person. They do this because meditation has no harmful side effects and can be easily done by anyone. Through meditation we can get calmness and clearer thought process.Meditation has been in practice for more than three thousand years and forms of meditation can be found in every major religion. While meditation styles, sources, and ideologies greatly differ, its purpose is uniform: personal transformation (Gunaratana, 1992). That is, one who enters a meditation practice will not be the same after the experience. The mind calms, concentration and thinking power increases, and tension and anxiety decreases as one becomes more able to handle life events (Goleman, 1988).Meditation has been found to improve mental health by reducing biochemical indicators of stress, decreasing anxiety, and enhancing psychological development.Understanding meditationThese days, meditation is commonly used for relaxation and stress reduction. Meditation is considered a type of mind-body complementary medicine. Meditation produces a deep state of relaxation. During meditation, you focus on your attention and eliminate the negatives thoughts that may be disturbed mind and produce stress. This process improves physical and emotional well-being.Meditation may be defined as the self-regulation of attention to suspend involvement in the habitual stream of thoughts. The goal of meditation is to reach a state of thoughtless awareness, during which a person is passively aware of sensations at the present moment. Although there are a number of different techniques the elements of muscle and 'logic' relaxation, self-induced state and selffocused skill are considered essential (Cardoso et al., 2004).Types of meditationThere are many types of meditation techniques .All share the same goal of achieving inner peace. There are some common meditation techniques in Indian context.Transcendental meditation: Using/chanting a mantra, such as a word, phrase or sound repeatedly silently, to narrow our conscious awareness and eliminate all thoughts from our mind. We focus exclusively on our mantra to achieve a state of perfect stillness and consciousness.Mindfulness meditation: This type of meditation is based on being mindful, or having an increased awareness and acceptance of living in the present moment. …

Depression, Guilt, and Tibetan Buddhism

Depression appears to be somewhat epidemic in the modern world. In prior empirical studies we found depression significantly associated with empathy-based guilt, empathic distress, and an overly active or misattributing moral system. In this study, we compared 98 Buddhists, who were primarily Tibetan meditation practitioners to 438 non-Buddhist, non-practicing community adults on a measure of depression along with measures of maladaptive guilt, empathic distress, anxiety and altruism. Our findings demonstrated that practitioners were significantly lower in depression, pathogenic guilt, anxiety, and empathic distress, and significantly higher on agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience and compassionate altruism directed towards strangers. Intensity of practice significantly correlated with positive outcomes. In addition, we found that within the population of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, those who endorsed the statement that the goal of meditation was other-focused (for the benefit of all sentient beings) were significantly lower in depression, empathic distress, and anxiety, and significantly higher in cognitive empathy (perspective-taking) compared to practitioners whose goal of meditation was self-focused.

Commentary on the AHRQ Report on Research on Meditation Practices in Health

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) report is a major reference point for establishing where the research on meditation stands and where it should go from here. This commentary argues that double blinding, a major component of the report's evaluation criteria, is not an appropriate control for placebo in meditation research. A viable alternative is to make the treatment and control groups equivalent on nonspecific therapeutic attention factors and expectation. High quality meditation research must also use qualified instructors, have high compliance levels, insure proficient practice, use state-of-the-art measurement methodology, and make sure control subjects are not inadvertently practicing the same or another form of meditation. None of these determinants of research quality was assessed by the AHRQ report. It is noteworthy that whereas randomized controlled trials have their place in demonstrating clinical efficacy, few if any of the major ideas in the basic or behavioral sciences have come from randomized trails. A wide range of study designs have demonstrated that the traditional goal of meditation, a state of inner silence called "transcendental consciousness," has unique physiological characteristics with far ranging implications for health, cognition, and behavior. Such studies need to be included in future reviews of meditation techniques.

Living Zen, Loving God (review)

Reviewed by: Living Zen, Loving God Robert E. Carter Living Zen, Loving God. By Ruben L. F. Habito. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2004. Pp. xxi + 129. At a time when one hears all too often of the irreconcilable differences between religions, it is a relief and a delight to read the words of someone who has gleaned much from Christianity (as a Jesuit priest) and from Zen Buddhism (as a practitioner whose enlightenment has been duly authenticated). Father Ruben L. F. Habito's challenge has been to harmonize the beliefs of these two distinct traditions, both of which have provided him with quite distinctive transformative experiences. It is a mutual influencing that he presents in very accessible prose in Living Zen, Loving God. While the lectures in this volume are not attempts to reconcile competing doctrines and approaches in detail, they do strive to move the reader back to those originary experiences of spiritual insight that both traditions share. Father Habito seeks to uncover the spiritual springs of Zen and Christianity, letting each speak in its own way, for religion is not about doctrines and dogma; rather, as the Zen philosopher Nishida Kitarō maintained, "religion is an event of the soul."1 Habito seems to be in agreement with such a position. In explicating this experiential territory, he includes chapters on emptiness and fullness, the Heart Sūtra, the four vows of the Bodhisattva, Kuan-yin with a thousand hands, and Zen and Christian spirituality. There are many apt conclusions and comparisons in these pages, such as a Christian adaptation of the Buddhist admonition to slay the Buddha if you meet him-for to meet him is to lose him by fixing his significance and intent as rigid doctrine and by rendering the absolute a "thing" in the first place. Habito writes that "if you meet the Christ, crucify him!" (p. 36). Or again, there is an excellent and simple account of compassion: "an out-stretched hand adjusting a pillow in the middle of the night . . . the night of emptiness, of unknowing. . . . And in the middle of this, as my pillow slips off, and my head feels displaced, spontaneously, my hand reaches out to adjust the pillow, and I go back to sleep. That's all. This koan is saying, that's compassion" (p. 76). The self has dropped off, and one now acts spontaneously and effortlessly from the purity and depth of radical interconnectedness. What is impressive about this book is the accuracy and ease with which difficult Zen and Buddhist ideas are expressed. For example, kensho is seeing clearly "the reality of everything as not separate from oneself, of everything as it really is" (p. xiii). This realization of interconnectedness results in social engagement, "the discovery of the real and deep bond that makes that person one with society, with the marketplace, with the whole universe" (p. 22). More precisely, "one sees one's True Self in the 'other,' the 'other' in one's True Self" (p. 22). While the goal of meditation is personal enlightenment, the fruit of enlightenment is the emptying of the ego-self, [End Page 343] and a reconnection with the everyday world, with a concern and passion heretofore unknown. Yet, as a devout Roman Catholic, Habito filters Zen through Christian lenses as often as he filters Christianity through Zen lenses. Creation ex nihilo, he urges, can be understood "as an invitation to that experience of the nothingness that is at the heart of our being, which becomes the fulcrum for experiencing the infinite life of God pulsing through this being, through the universe, from moment to moment" (p. 23). Each and every thing is now to be understood as "a complete and perfect manifestation of the Infinite" (p. 23). But what is less than clear here is the meaning of "manifestation." Exactly what is every thing a manifestation of? The Zen answer must be that the awareness of everything as a manifestation of the "absolute" must be understood nondualistically. Habito provides a powerful chapter on the Heart Sūtra, which instructs us that emptiness is precisely form, and form precisely emptiness. Everything is a manifestation of the creative universal energy that is the...

The goal of meditation

The goal of meditation