vipasana on mental health and life stress

Introduction:
Modern societies are constantly changing all over t eh world. People go through various changes and social problems everywhere. The rapid developments in science and technology brought us convenient living, but that lifestyle does not give us comfort. Every minute, there are many kinds of crimes, accidents, and natural disasters in the world. People never know what will happen in the near future. In these living circumstances, people have to compete for surviving and it causes stress, anxiety, worry and emotional problems. These negative feelings can create toxin which might be harmful for our body. For instance, over-stress can create different problems such as insomnia, asthma, depression, drug addiction, smoking, alcohol abuse, and other illnesses.
Thus, it is quite necessary to learn how to cope with stress and negative feelings. This study introduces meditation, one of the effective techniques for handling those problems. From doing meditation, our mind can be calm and peaceful, and we can find true happiness in the end. Meditation can also bring personal insight and self-understanding. It is doorway into an enlightened way of knowing ourselves better so that we can overcome many stressful situations by our inner sources. Many studies have already demonstrate that meditation has a healing effect on various kinds of disease.
Meditation was already introduced as a powerful technique for well-being five thousand years ago in Asia. However, it was spread to Western society thousands of years after it was adopted in the East and it finally started to gain popularity in the mid- 20th century. (Meditation : History , 2008). Western people have started to practice meditation and have adapted it to medical, health care, scientific, and psychotherapeutic purposes. Nowadays meditation is already popular in many Western countries.
In India, meditation became very popular a hundred year ago. It has been used for many purpose such as managing stress, obtaining better health, healing various kinds of diseases.

2. CONEPTS OF MEDITATION AND MINDFULNESS
The key concepts of relation to meditation are explained in the following

2.1 Concept of Meditation
“Meditation means being meditative, silent, peaceful, with no thoughts in the mind and it is consciousness without content. When a mirror is not reflecting anything, it is meditation”, said Gautam Buddha (Beckett 2008).The word meditation is derived from two Latin words: Meditari (to think, to dwell upon, and to exercise the mind) and the mederi ( to heal). It is originally from Sanskrit word “medha” which means wisdom. Buddha is one of the biggest proponents in the meditation history. Buddha has been also known as one of the biggest meditation representation around since 500 B.C (Jones 2008). It has also been said that meditation has originated from Shamtha, which is the Sanskrit term for the basic foundation of calm and relaxed bare attention. Such calm acknowledging is the essential and fundamental step, a “letting go” that allows the meditator to access the next stages (Austin 2006, 11). In other words, meditation is a systematic way of making our minds quite so that we can contact our true identity - self, which is the source of constant joy, bliss and peace. (Meditation Corner, 2004).
In addition, meditation can help us to understand our own mind. We are able to learn how to transform our mind from negative to positive, from disturbed to peaceful from unhappy to happy. The aim of meditation is overcoming negative minds and cultivating productive thoughts (Gyatsa 2007). The attitudes needed for meditation are non-judging, patience, beginners; mind, trust, acceptance, and letting go (Kabat- Zinn 2007).

2.2 Concept of mindfulness
Meditation has been recently used as way to manage stress and gain the state of mindfulness. In other words, meditation is a practice of cultivating mindfulness. It is about being aware of where your mind is from and trying to be ‘here and now, at the moment’. Various thoughts can disturb the procedure while mediating, but one can releases the thoughts freely and let them go. By doing this, people can realize that the thoughts may not be an entity of absolute truth. When your mind is clear of distracting thoughts, you can obtain new perspective and new ways of handling stress and other problems.
The concept of mindfulness had roots in Buddhism and other contemplative traditions where conscious attention and awareness are actively enriched. It is most commonly defined as the state of being attentive to and aware of what is happening in the present. (Brown & Ryan 2003).
Basically, there is nothing particularly Buddhist about it. People are all mindful to one degree or another, moment by moment. Meditation is an essential human capacity. The contribution of Buddhist traditions has been in part to emphasize simple and effective ways to refine this capacity and bring it to all aspects of life (Kabat - Zinn 2003, 146).There are several definitions of mindfulness, Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as our capacity for awareness and self-knowing. It is the practice of paying closer attention not only to the world around us, but to the cultivation of our own minds and bodies (Kabat - Zinn 2005, 75). In this other journal, mindfulness is often spoken as insight meditation, which means a deep non-conceptual seeing into the nature of mind and world. This seeing requires a spirit of perpetual and persistent exploration as in, “What is this?” toward whatever arises in awareness, and toward “Who is attending”, “Who is seeing”, “Who is meditating”/ (Kabat -Zinn 2003, 146).
In addition, mindfulness is a skill that allow us to be less reactive to what is happening in the moment. It is a way of relating to all experience - positive, negative, and neutral - such that our overall level of suffering is reduced and our sense of well-being increases. We are easily caught up in various distracting thoughts which are mindlessness. In contrast, when we are mindful, out attention, is not involved in the past or future, and we are not judging or rejecting what is occurring at the moment. We are present. This kind of attention generated energy, clear mind, and joy. It is a skill that can be cultivated by anyone (Germer 2005, 241-253).
According to Olendzki (2005), in western countries, most therapists consider meditation as a relaxation technique. Some meditation may be relaxing, but the style and the purpose of meditation decide its effect in part. (Germer 2005). Mindfulness in contemporary psychology has been adopted as an approach for increasing awareness and responding effectively to mental process that contribute to emotional distress and maladaptive behavior (Bishop 2004, 230).
People may misunderstand what mindfulness meditation does. Mindfulness meditation is not a relaxation exercise and it is not a way to avoid difficulties in life. We confront our difficulties before the eliminate them. Moreover, mindfulness meditation is about settling into our current experience in an alert and objective way, not about achieving a different state of mind (Germer 2005, 16).
In this busy modern society, we just run forward. However we should stop running and try to be in the present so that we could realize and see deeply that there are many conditions we can be happy about. Washing dishes is usually any annoying job, but it can be a pleasant job after mindfulness meditation. The following chapter discuss how this mindfulness process can occur in our mind.
History of Meditation
Meditation has been extensively practices in many civilization for thousands of years. It is, however, difficult to trace the history of meditation without considering the religious context within which it was practiced and because the term meditation refers to so many different practices (see above). It is thus not clear when meditation firs arose, yet research suggests that primitive hunting and gathering societies already used repetitive, rhythmic chants to appease the gods, thereby inducing different states of consciousness that may be considered as meditative states.
Most of the neuron scientific research on meditation reviewed in this thesis involves Buddhist contemplative traditions or practices that are derived from early Buddhist traditions. Furthermore, Buddhist history and philosophy are important features that are intertwined in the context of most Buddhist meditation traditions. Therefore, a short overview of the history of Buddhist meditation is in place.

Siddhartha Gautama, born around 500 BCE in ancient India (Nepal), was the founder of Buddhism. Different meditative techniques were already being practices at that time on Siddhartha was known as the Buddha and he would spend the rest of life sharing his experiences of enlightenment in teachings known as ‘dharma’. He also founded the monastic way of life, with meditation as a central component. The central goal of Buddhist meditation is the elimination of suffering by exercising control of one’s own mind and senses. To achieve, this, the Buddha taught two types of meditation, samatha meditation and vipassana meditation. Samatha literally translates to “quiescence” and its practice refers to inducing a state in which the particular maintains focus on an object for a theoretically unlimited amount of time. Vipassana translated to “insight” and vipassana meditation involves a type of meta-awareness that enables the practitioner to gain insight into one’s assumptions about identity and emotions resulting in a realization of “selflessness”. These two types of meditation from the basis for the wide variety of meditative practices that have been developed since and are integrated in most practices where the cultivation of samatha and vipassana respectively enable the stability and clarity of the meditative state.
After the Buddha died, the original unity of Buddhism began to fragment with the most significant split occurring around the 4th century BCE. This split resulted in two forms, one now known as the Mahayana tradition of northern Asia and the other tradition now known as Thervada spreading all over India and southeast Asia. In the 3rd century BCE Buddhism was spread all over India and beyond to other countries as far as Sri Lanka, Egypt and Greece. From Sri Lanka it was spread to Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos where it was named Theravada Buddhism. Around the 1st century CE, Mahayana Buddhism arrived in China, where it flourished around the 6th - 8th century CE and evolved into other forms of Buddhism such as Pure Land Buddhism and Chan or Zen Buddhism. These forms of Buddhism were then spread to Japan.
It was only in the middle of the 19th century that Buddhism first came to be known in the west when the European colonial empires brought the cultures of India and China to our attention and Chinese immigrants were coming to the west coast of the United States. Following the turbulences of World War II in the 20th century, Buddhism gained more popularity, with Zen Buddhism becoming particularly popular in United States. Asian masters and westerners who had studies in Asia were now able to found monasteries and spread the Buddhist lifestyle and practices even more. Today it is estimated that there are around 350 million Buddhist in the world, with estimates between 2 and 10 million followers in the west.
Different types of meditation
The common feature across the many divergent meditative practices is the regulation of attention. Depending on how the attention processes are directed, meditative practices have been classified into two categories concentrative (also referred to as focused attention (FA) meditation and mindfulness (also referred to as open monitoring (OM) mediation. These two styles of meditation roughly refer to samatha and vipasanna and are often combined, either within a single practice session or over the course of a practitioners training, and are found in many contemplative traditions including, Zen, Vipassana and Tibetan Buddhism.
Focused attention meditation entails focusing and sustaining selective attention on a specific mental or sensory activity such as repeated sound, as imagined image or a bodily sensation caused for instance by respiration. Sustaining selective attention involves the constant monitoring of the quality of this attention. With distractions arise and attention wanders away from the chosen activity, a practitioner is generally instructed to recognize this mind wandering and to subsequently disengage the attention from the distraction and redirect attention to the intended activity. When progressing in this form of meditation, attention rests more readily and stable on the chosen activity and thus the ability to sustain focus becomes more and more ‘effortless’. In advanced practitioners, FA meditation is reported to create a sense of physical lightness and energy and the need for sleep is said to be reduced.
OM meditation entails non-reactive and non-judgmental monitoring of the content of ongoing experiences, without focusing on any explicit object or activity. OM meditation is characterized by an open presence and the cultivation of the ‘reflexive’ awareness associated with a more vivid conscious access to the rich features of each experience, such as ongoing emotional or cognitive processes. Even though there is no contrasting foreground, this awareness remains in the background. A central aim of OM meditation is to gain more insight into the usually implicit features of one’s mental life and it is said to enable the practitioner to more readily transform emotional and cognitive habits. In advanced practitioners, OM meditation allegedly leads to enhanced sensitivity to bodily and environmental feathers while it reduces of the form that creates mental distress.
Zen Meditation
Zen Meditation knew two major forms, Rinzai Zen and Soto Zen. Both forms of practice usually start with focusing the attention on the breath as a means to develop the basic level of concentration required for more advanced of meditation. In Rinzai Zen, practitioners are instructed to concentrate on Koans konas are riddles that cannot be solved with knowledge or thinking. Koans are ways to help the practitioners get rid of the thought processes common to ordinary consciousness and to instead access pure awareness of the present moment. Soto zen is a practice based on mindfulness and open awareness. Practitioners are instructed to observe their thoughts and emotions without clinging to them but to let them go and to bring their attention back to the present moment.

Mantra Meditation
Mantra or prayer meditation is one of the most widespread and popular forms of meditation and is present in Tibetan Buddhism, as well as in Sufism, Hinduism and many other traditions. Practitioners are instructed to recite a mantra, either aloud or sub vocally, thereby focusing their full attention on the recitation or on the meaning of the manta. A mantra can be religious or mystical sound, a word, a sentence, or a poem. The particular bodily sensation that are induced by the recitation or a mantra believed to clam an focus the mind and body.
Transcendental meditation
Transcendental meditation is aimed at quieting and ultimately transcending the ordinary stream of internal mental dialogue by means of reciting a mantra. However unlike mantra mediation, mantras used in transcendental practice have no meaning but are used for their sound, which is such that attention easily and automatically attends to it. Transcendental meditation thus places a primary emphasis on the absence of concentrative effort and instead aims at developing a witnessing, thought-free, unbounded awareness in which the mantra becomes more secondary and ultimately disappear. The sensation induced by the sound of the mantra are believed to clam the mind and body without the need for intense concentrative efforts and are believed to result in profound relaxation, marked by breath quiescence, and reduced conceptual content.
Compassion meditation
Loving- kindness or compassion meditation aims at the generation of non-referential feelings of loving - kindness or compassion toward all living beings and is also a common practice in Tibetan Buddhism. This kind of meditation begins with the visualization of a respected, a beloved and a neutral person in order to evoke feelings of compassion to each of these persons separately. Practitioners are then instructed to gradually broaden their focus from this one particular person towards a combination of these persons and finally towards all living beings and everyday life, thereby developing a non-referential, reflexive state of compassion. The cultivation of compassion is believed to create a general sense of well-being and to aid in prevention of feelings of anger or irritation.
Vipassana Meditation
In Insight or Vipassana meditation, practitioners also begin by observing their breath and the sensations it evokes around the nostril area to help develop a focused and sustained attention. Practitioners are then instructed to mentally scan each and every part of their body carefully and feel the sensations in each of those parts. The aim of this practice is to keep the attention moving and to objectively observe the experienced sensations, thereby avoiding the development of feelings of aversion or desire for specific sensations.
Vipassana is not just a technique. It is a way of being in this world, although initially one has to employ a method or make preparations for the required change to occur. It is a return to our true, real nature, which we have forgotten. It is observation of the contents of our mind as they appear and disappear without reacting to them. The typical reactions that arise are those of craving for, or aversion to, things. Detached observation, with suspended evaluations and mental reactions, does not encourage the suppression or expression of emotions but sees with impartiality, making it possible for us to deal with these emotional reactions appropriately.
It may seem an almost impossible task to eradicate all cravings and aversions (and one might question the desirability of such an Endeavour when one sets out on this path) but what one can hope for initially is freedom from one’s fears and addictions to one’s desires, which can be a hindrance to the real goals of life. Vipassana enables us to transform our reactions (which are conditioned) into actions that are based on a free choice. The Theoretical StanceVipassana practice is based on the individual’s inner experiences. No theoretical framework is used to explain or analyze intrapsychic phenomena. It is assumed that the meanings hidden inside the experiences will be revealed to the individual as the inner unfolding takes place. No attempt is made to impose meaning from outside. The individual is encouraged to face anything that comes up in the mind, no matter how distressing, without any desire to distort it.

Vipassana meditation is unique in many ways. As the meditation that was practiced by the Buddha and that led to his liberation, it is the cause underlying his subsequent historical role—it is the second womb through which he was reborn enlightened. No other person,or system of self-development, has influenced so many hundreds of millions of people, across so many historical eras, among so many nations and cultures, in such an unambiguous manifestation of compassion, harmony and peace. Historically, before the Buddha, all religions were a mixture of moral injunction, propitiation of gods, magic, superstition, and ethnocentrism. The Buddha brought forth the idea of a limitless community, not based on language, ethnicity, locality, not even upon species! His teaching was the first to emphasize the commonality of all living beings as the basis of relatedness, and was the first to encourage spiritual development that was psychological and social, and that did not rest upon placating some fantasized god. The Buddha realized that liberation lies in our own hearts, rather than in aligning with a powerful external Other whom we may be able to cajole or coerce into saving us.
While other religions or cultures had praised virtue, the liberating role of ethics had been previously circumscribed by ritual and by other attempts to manipulate events. The
Buddha brought to the attention of humankind the identity of virtue and exaltation. His teaching fused into one what had previously seemed like two aspects of existence—empathic ways of living, and gratifying personal feeling states. Through the practice of Vipassana, the Buddha raised into the consciousness of the human community a sunrise of universal, non-tribal, psychological, ethical, non-superstitious relatedness towards all,that advances its practitioner and his or her environment towards becoming vehicles oflove and liberty.
Vipassana is not only what the Buddha practiced, but it is what he preached. He encouraged Vipassana practice as universally relevant and beneficent for kings, merchants, housewives and murderers. While he emphasized that not everyone could use Vipassana to become a Buddha within this lifetime, he claimed that everyone could grow on the path. The same sunlight falls on all of us. While we all view different scenes, when we awaken, we all see by the same morning light. Not everyone can benefit to the same degree but everyone can benefit from the equanimity and loving-kindness that form the foundation of Vipassana.
The uniqueness of Vipassana also rests upon its basis in empiricism. The Buddha discerned the technique by observing what functioned effectively for him. Like any carefully tested observation of nature, Vipassana is a description of natural law that is reliable across time and culture. It is free of antecedent beliefs or assumptions, and contains the same timeless factuality as knowing the ocean is wet and the land is solid. It is more accurately described as an ethical psychology than as a religion. Even to the modern listener, it rings true, not because of ethno scriptural authority, nor even because of the Buddha’s historical apotheosis, but because it harnesses reason and observation to explicate personal experience. It carries us to the edge of the ocean of existence, where our life is bared to realizations that are obvious and inevitable, like the fact that we are temporary visitors in an ancient, ongoing, vast universe.
The definition of Vipassana meditation is: The method by which a person may attain total purification. Total purification means the absence of hate, fear, greed, and delusion, and the presence of love, compassion, and equanimity. Through the practice of Vipassana, a person became the Buddha, that is, he became unshakably anchored in goodness, incapable of harm, and able to explain his methodology to others so that, if their attainments were not as absolute as his, at least their direction would be the same.
Vipassana is merely the careful delineation of common sense. It captures what is common to all civilized communities, and extracts the essence: to avoid harming others, to help others, and to cultivate thoughts and emotions with those same patterns. Even this simple definition encompasses the social, interpersonal, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development of the individual.
Vipassana is the only path we can take with the conviction that we are following the historical guidance of the most powerful, enduring, and authentic first-person testimonial about personal transformation into absolute goodness.
We are all mammals who identify with the sensations of our own bodies. We protect them at all costs and often grab immediate palliation and pleasure at the expense of virtues we like to believe we have embraced, but which in fact we place second to continuous self-mollification. We crave pleasure and fear pain. Our journey down the path beyond pleasure and pain can easily be diverted. We need to be grounded in a meditation that roots us in the bigger picture of what ennobles our life. We require a reminder, a discipline, a practice that helps us to draw away from shortsighted reactions to our sensations. We need restorative guidance to activate the life of love and reason in the real texture of our daily adventures. When we anchor ourselves in the perspective of Vipassana meditation, every thought and breath can be incorporated into a path of awareness. Then our smallest choices become the forces that shape our relationship to our bodies, our emotions, our neighbors and the world. We become travelers of the Path, people who live with conscious intention (though varying success) to activate wisdom in every moment.
Vipassana is unique as the path to total purification, the method of the Buddha, the source of his attainments, the outflow of his realization, and a practical, moment by moment psychology that is ethical, behavioral, emotional, cognitive and spiritual. But “unique” doesn’t mean exclusive. Occasionally everyone is spontaneously practicing the same thing: observing how their reactions to little signals of bodily comfort gain too much clout in determining the direction of their lives, and attempting to gain some objective distance from these petty tugs, so that life can flow in harmony with greater and more numinous forces of gratitude, service, and joy. Just as exercise is to some degree intrinsic to human life— though it may be pursued by some people only haphazardly and minimally— Vipassana is the Buddha’s term for a natural capacity of our minds. Many people hone it without self-consciously labeling it and many cultures teach aspects of it under different names. All pure beings, regardless of what terms they use, have arrived where they are through detachment from narcissistic preoccupation with the sensations of their own bodies.
All loving, engaged, and generous lives are based upon the same psychological law: practicing equanimity within the sensations of our own life. Vipassana is unique not in the sense that is it better than some other path, but in the sense that it already lies within and flows with any teaching of helpfulness, no harmfulness, and loving relatedness.
Water—the solvent that enables cells, tissues, life—is a compound that is ubiquitous and clear. Rather than rarity, universality makes water unique. Vipassana is unique in its evocation of the general principle. It is unique not in contrast to, but as the active ingredient within all paths of peace. It is not a religion, but a religious psychology; it is not psychotherapy, though it is psychotherapeutic.
Vipassana simply means clarifying human nature at its junction with the sensations of life. Its uniqueness isn’t that it can be found only in an isolated, specialized locale, but that the path to Vipassana begins at every front door. Because Vipassana commences everywhere, belongs to no one, and has neither esoteric teaching nor priesthood to preserve it, it is itself only when it is purveyed as common property for the common good. When sold for profit, it is no longer Vipassana— just as physical or emotional intimacy, by definition, ceases to be themselves if they are exchanged for money; just as friendship, by definition, has no fee. Vipassana is analogous to a supper among friends whom you have invited to your house, while professional psychotherapy is analogous to a restaurant. Vipassana is not comparable to professional healing, which is fairly dispensed for a livelihood by particular healers applying their skills to individual problems in particular ways at particular times and places. If Vipassana is like water, the universal solvent, then professional healing is analogous to medication—an elixir of medicinal use for a specific time, place and person.
A Psychological Systems Definition of Vipassana
Vipassana is an ancient, free, nonprofessional, nonsectarian, ethical, universal, psychology of spiritual development. It is based upon methodical, continuous, objective observation of oneself at the level of sensations. This special form of observation catalyzes a multilevel, systems development throughout the strata of one’s personality. Part of Vipassana’s unique contribution to mental health derives from its constellation of psychological actions. Vipassana can be conceptualized as the creation through meditation of a force field that energizes new patterns in six levels of personality.
a) Vipassana induces changes at the molecular level of the meditator’s body.
Systematic, increasingly refined and subtle self-observation, without reaction, alters the flow of stress-related chemicals. The practice of equanimity as a recurrent and lifelong focus, reduces the frequency and intensity with which somatic alarm signals release their
Neurotransmitters. Storage, release, amount and type of circulating messenger
neurochemicals are altered by long term practice of harmony and non-reactivity in the place of anger, fear, or passion. The meditator’s body to some degree will, over time, come to consist of different substances than formerly.
b) Vipassana changes the biology of the meditator’s body. As reaction patterns
Change, as neurochemical composition changes, and as a self-aware and compassionate lifestyle increases, sleep, diet, and expressions of distress as well as patterns of pleasure may all be affected. Psychosomatic diseases, as well as basic functions like weight, heart rate, or alertness may be altered. Meditators find themselves choosing to avoid old habits and choosing to cultivate new personal options that spring from a keener relationship to their bodies. If over a lifetime you select a calmer diet and more salubrious relaxations, you become a different animal. Our tissues have the capacity to remold themselves to some extent in response to our friendship with them. Attunement to our bodies is automatically experienced as nurturance of them.
c) Vipassana has a dramatic effect at the psychological level. Old complexes are
relinquished, new attitudes and virtues are cultivated, memories resurface, relationships are seen and developed in new light, the future is deconstructed and reopened in new ways, human history and community are known to have different potentials than was once believed, and event after event in one’s life is experienced and reexamined in a new perspective. This is the most dramatic and obvious contribution of meditation and the reason it is attractive to many people.
d) Vipassana is value-based education. The goal of Vipassana is to manifest the virtues of love, compassion, joy and equanimity, and as a psychology it can be understood as incorporating direct learning. Virtue is cultivated in privacy, and it is also interjected from the examples of teachers, who may reside as nuclei of inspiration in the minds of their students. In this sense, Vipassana incorporates a cognitive-behavioral psychology that encourages active practice of ideal ways of solving problems, of interacting with others, or of participating in society. Vipassana is also something you do. Reverence, respect, gratitude, service are ways to be in the world that can be learned, just like riding a bicycle, and meditation is also a discipleship to right action. Character building is a matter of repetition and effort, not just of sitting still with eyes closed. Vipassana is training in psychological culture.
e) Vipassana is an environmental psychology that stresses the feedback loop of harmony. The way we treat the world determines much of the response that we will get. This principle is not limited to the human world. The motivations with which we deal with cats, elephants, and trees are also expressions of our psyches, and set in motion responses which we will in turn be receiving back from the recipients of our outgoing messages. For a meditator, respect for life is a logical extension of self-respect. The air, the earth will reply to us and tell us how our wishes, fears and concerns are impacting them and therefore recalculating to us. The world is a sensitive receptor of our inner life.
As our inner world expresses itself through actions, the membrane of our surroundings vibrates with the destruction or joy that we have generated. To the meditator, everything around us is a mirror in which we are revealed. Everything around us is also feeling the sting of our wrath, or humming our hum. Awareness of our living environment is the psychological sensibility of Vipassana.
f) Vipassana is a path to nibb±na, the transcendence of the material world. Encoded in the psychology of Vipassana is a faith in the More, an intuition of the Beyond. Vipassana is a psychology of the numinous, free from any concrete description, belief, vision, theology, anthropomorphism, fantasy, or reduction of any kind. Vipassana contains an experiential thrust beyond limits of concept and speech, to animating, personality impacting faith in absolute good.
Although no attempt is made to analyze the experience, one does use some understanding of certain universal principles, which are helpful in freeing oneself from past mental reactions, false beliefs and false self definitions. All experiences are understood in terms of the following three principles:
1. Anicca (impermanence): nothing is permanent; everything exists against the background of no-thingess, which is predominant. This to leads to a state of unsatisfactoriness, which is at the bottom of human life, and one begins to question the essence of things.
2. Anatta (agolessness or non-identification): not identifying oneself with what one encounters during introspection. It is not a denial or disowning parts of ourselves but recognition of false identifications and letting go of things that we are holding on to out of our own insecurities.
3. Dukkha (suffering): this is the corollary of impermanence. One can think of two different types of suffering, in-built and self-created. In-built suffering is not related to anything in particular. It is about eventual nothingness or uncertainty about things. In spite of our best efforts we remain subject to chance and battle with doubts about the fairness of human life.
It is easier to avoid self-created suffering as it originates from our own mental reactions, self-definitions and the conclusions we draw about our experiences and the world in general. There is a link between the two types of sufferings. Our unwillingness to accept inbuilt suffering makes us react in certain ways leading to further suffering. Vipassana encourages us to confront the ultimate concerns pertaining to in-built suffering. The ‘acceptance of suffering’ in Buddhist psychology is generally misunderstood as a nihilistic approach. The acceptance should not be viewed as the end point. Rather, it is a means of achieving the goal of total eradication of suffering. Even in-built suffering dissolves with the dissolution of one’s ego. It becomes a non-issue as one transcends the human ways of looking at things.
Benefits of Meditation
Meditation is basically a method for working on the mind. First, we learn how to identity our different positive and negative mental states, and then the utilize methods for removing negative states and developing positive ones. As our mind becomes more positive, we learn how to react well to everyday situations and our relationships with others. In other words, our actions become positive and effective, and our overall experience of life becomes more satisfying and useful to ourselves and others.
Meditation is used to assist in reaching a higher level of spiritual entity and self awareness. It has been practiced widely in many cultures around the world, especially the more spiritual cultures of Asia.
However, in Western countries, meditation is a method to combat stresses of increasing work pressure resulting in absence because of illness. In Netherlands, it is reported that employers are so attracted towards the benefits of meditation that provisions have been made to put meditation into workers contracts. Also the Dutch Police and Department of Defense have introduced meditation to training programmes to assist employee’s physical and mental effectiveness (Beckett 2008).
Recently mindfulness meditation has been applied to many psychological and health related problems and researchers show successful positive outcomes in this. A simple technique practices for as few as 10 minutes per day can help to control stress, decrease anxiety, improve cardiovascular health and achieve a greater capacity for relaxation (Stoppler 2005).
Meditation relaxes the body and mind as well as help to gain peace without any side effects. It is easy to practice any time and by anyone. It does not require any special equipment and can be practiced wherever we want. It is possible to do while walking, eating, riding a bus or doing laundry. Sitting, walking, Tai Chi, and yoga are quite popular forms of meditation whereas drawing, painting, dancing, and listening to music could also be simple methods which could be practiced on a daily basis.
Meditation makes people more than only feel good and clam. It makes us perform better and it has an effect on the whole body. It helps to slow down the heart rate and breathing and also normalizes blood pressure. It decreases the sweating level and helps us to use oxygen more efficiently. Adrenal glands produce less cholesterol, our mind ages at a slower rate, and our immune function improves. It makes our mind clear and increases creativity. People who meditate regularly find it easy to give up life-damaging habits such as smoking drinking and drugs. Besides this, meditation had various psychological and physiological benefits. Firstly, as psychological benefits, meditation reduces stress, anxiety and depression. It also increases creativity, intelligence, moral reasoning and memory, it reduces irritability and moodiness. Moreover, it increases emotional control, self-esteem and alertness. It also helps to improve relationships and concentration. Secondly, as physiological benefits, meditation prevents, slows, or controls pain of chronic diseases. It also boosts the immune system and helps lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. In addition, it improves airflow, especially in those with asthma (Meditation 2008).
Moreover, doing a meditation in a right way can be useful in headaches, mental stress, symptoms of pre-menstrual syndrome and menopause as well as many other diseases and blood circulation. It provides stamina, strength and flexibility to fight every kind of illness, diseases, physical and mental problem. The important features of meditation are that it works without side-effects and any medicine. Many studies have demonstrated the board range of positive impact or meditation on many other kinds of diseases such depression, anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social phobia, post traumatic stress disorder. (Brantley 2005: Kabat-Zinn 2003)For instance, meditation can work for depression. Feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and isolation are symptoms of depression. Meditation increases self-confidence and feelings of connection to other people. Many studies have shown that depressed people feel much better after provoking the relaxation response (Hargreaves & Mason 2001: Segal, Teasdale & Williams, 2002).
In addition, in medical studies, meditation has been shown to lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Further study continues to measure the impact and benefit of meditation on the risk factors to cardiac problems, as well. These include hypertension, high cholesterol, obesity, and insulin resistance. In a study published in the winter 2007 Ethnicity & Disease medial journal, transcendental meditation positively impacted patients who suffer from congestive heart failures (Benefits of meditation). Also according to Brantley (2005). Mindful Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) approach, which was designed by Kabat-Zinn et al. in Massachusetts Medical Center in MA, was reported in many researchers as a magnificent method for treating chronic pain, depression, cancer, eating disorder, cardiac disease, and stress reduction (Brantley 2005, 139).
The following sentences are a more detail example of the effect of MBSR approach. A study conducted by Kutz et al. (1992) investigating the effects of MBSR on a group of people with long term anxiety and obsessive neuroses as well as personality disorder. They showed expressive improvements in self-rated and therapist rated symptoms. Kabat-Zinn et al. (1996) utilized MBSR programs based on mindfulness meditation for patients with anxiety disorders and found a reduction in the levels of anxiety and panic during the course and over a 3 moth follow-up period. Over the last 25 years, mindfulness training has been used in hospital clinics and community setting offering pain management and stress reduction programs including MBSR (Melbourne Academic Mindfulness Interest Group 2006, 286).
In summary, meditation may be an effective treatment option for conditions such as anxiety, stress, chronic pain and eating and affective disorders as well as being an adjunctive treatment or other physical health conditions and behavior change interventions (Melbourne Academic Mindfulness Interest Group 2006, 287).
As a clinical point of view, meditation should not be conducted for some people such as borderline psychotic or psychotic patients without supervision by psychotherapist familiar with meditation. This is because those sensitive patients bring dizziness, feelings of dissociation while they are doing meditation. Also therapists should provide careful instruction, training, and follow-up observation (Carrington 1978, according to Shapiro 2008, 8).
Balanced mindful of love and compassion. This scientific law that one’s thoughts, feelings, judgments and sensations become clear. Through direct experience, the nature of how owe grows or regresses, how one produces suffering or frees oneself from suffering is understood life becomes characterized by increased awareness, non delusion, self control and peace.

Mental Health
Mental health is a term used to describe either a level of cognitive or emotional well being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual’s ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and efforts to achieve psychological resilience. The World Health Organization (2005) defines mental health as “a state of well being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution of his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution of his or her community”. It was previously stated that there as on one “official” or mental health (WHO, 2001). Cultural differences, subjective assessments, and competing professional theories all affect how “mental health” is defined.
In the mind 19th century, William Sweetzer was the firs to clearly define the term “mental hygiene”, which can be seen as the precursor to contemporary approaches to work on promoting positive mental health. Isane Ray (2007) one of thirteen founders of the American Psychiatric Association, further defined mental hygiene as an art to preserve the mind against incidents and influences which would inhibit or destroy its energy, quality or development. Many mental health professionals are beginning to or already understand, the importance of competency is religious diversity and spirituality.
Life stress
The modern world, which is said to be a world of achievements, as also a world of a stress, on finds stress everywhere. Whether it be within the family, business organization, enterprise or any other social or economic activity, right from the time of birth tell the last breath drawn, an individual is invariably exposed to various stressful situations. Thus, it is not surprising that interest is the issue has been rising with the advancement of the present century which has been called the “Age of Anxiety and Stress” stress is a subject which is hard to avoid. The terms is discussed not only in our every day conversations but has become enough of a public issue to attract widespread media attention whether it be radio, television, newspapers, of magazines the issues of stress figures everywhere.
Rosch(2008) found that stress is difficult for scientist to define because it is a subjective sensation associated with varied symptoms that differ with each individual. In addition, stress is not always a synonym for distress. Increased stress improves productivity up to appoint, after which things rapidly deteriorate, and that level also differ for each individual. By finding the happy medium it is possible to maintain balance and harmony in daily life, being more productive and less self-destructive. Interestingly Kornfild (2004) finds that to Vipasanais to look into our lives with interest and kindness and discover how to be wakeful and free. Vipasana meditation is the development or discovery, depending on your orientation, of consciousness independent of the visual and verbal symbols that constitute what we call thought. It is the deliberate cultivation of a mental state of the body with an attentive focus of the mind. The focus may be on a sound (mantra), a breathing, an object, a part of the body, a mental image, or a prayer(Keefe,1986)

Depression. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH ); (2009) describes the state of depression as persistent sad ,anxious or “empty” feelings ,feelings of hopelessness and pessimism, feelings of guilt, worthlessness and helplessness, irritability, restlessness and loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex. Other symptoms may include: fatigue and decreased energy; difficulty concentrating; remembering details and making decisions; insomnia, early- morning wakefulness, or excessive sleeping; overcoming or appetite loss; thoughts of suicide and suicide attempts; and persistent aches or pains, headaches, cramps or digestive problems that do not ease even with treatment (NIMH,2009).
Review of Literature
The purpose of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of Vipasan Meditation on certain areas of the Meditators life. This chapters a is a survey of some studies conducted in this area.
This is a new area of research, and therefore there is a paucity of research studies.Vipasana Meditation, so far has focused on an Meditators.Therefore,the researcher has reviewed the available literature on Meditation in the few decades.The research studies were from books, classical studies, research journals and PsychINFO,PsychNET,PsychAPA also on line journals.
Vipasana Meditation:A positive mental Health Measure by Lt.Col.M.B.Pethe and Dr.R.M.Chokhani(2010).Found that Vipasana’s ability to tranquillize the human mind, changing its turbulence to calmness with increased vitality, makes it a positive mental health measure and an excellent human potential development method. The meditator becomes free to live for higher values, richer goals: loving-kindness, compession, sympathetic joy and peacefulness. Vipasana thus leads people from narcissism to mature, social love, to a life of altruiSM3 and this personal transformation becomes the catalyst for social change and development.
In a pilot study Walach et al.(2007) evaluated the potential of Vipasan based stress reduction for management and others. Workers participated in vipasana training for stress – related problems (n=12 ); (control n=12 ). The authors conducted interviews and measured coping and mental health. Qualitative interviews indicated that subjects had attained more awareness of work- related problems contributing to stress and had grown more critical toward their work environment. In the treatment group, positive strategies of coping with stress increased and negative strategies of coping decreased with significant difference at post treatment compared to control. Eighty- two percent of the participants reported having reached their personal goal and good mental health.
Paraissman (2008) found that Vipasana based stress reduction training is an effective treatment for stress and anxiety that accompanies daily life and chronic illness’Vipasana training is also therapeutic for healthcare providers, enhancing their interactions with patients.
The literature review suggests that further exploration of Vipasana meditation as an effective tool for enhancing mental health, stress, anxiety and depression. Therefore this research analysis was initiated in the hope of developing greater understanding and awareness of ourselves and one another through vipasana meditation in a sprit of compassion and loving-kindness.
Methodology
Statement of the problem
To find out the impact of “Vipasana Meditation on Mental Health and Life Stress “of newly joined and experienced Vipassana meditators and non Vipasana meditators. The focal point and differences due to, gender and age.
Objective of the present study :
1. To assess and analyze the Vipasana Meditation on mental health and life stress.
2. To find out differences between men and women Vipasana meditation participants and non participants
3. To know the mental health of Vipasana participants and non Vipasana participants.
4. To find out the life stress of Vipasana participants and non Vipasana participants
5. To known the relationship between Vipasana meditation, mental health and life stress
6. To know the impact of Vipasan meditation, mental health and life stress on aged.
The Variables
• Independent variable - Vipasana meditation, gender and age
• Dependent variable - Mental health, stress ,Depression and Anxiety
Hypothesis
Following are the major hypothesis for the present study they are
1. There is significant impact of Vipasana mediation on mental health and life stress.
2. There is a significant difference between men and women Vipasana meditation participants and non participants.
3. There is significant difference between mental health of Vipasana participants and non Vipasana participants.
4. There is significant difference between life stress of Vipasana participants and non Vipasana participants.
5. There is a significant relationship between Vipasana meditation, mental health and life stress.
6. There is significant impact of Vipasana meditation, mental health and life stress on age.
Population of the study
The population of the study consists of participants and non participants of various Vipasana meditation centers.
Sample
The sample consists of 600 among them 200 newly joined Vipasana meditators and 200 more than two years experienced meditators and 200 General group.
Tools
1.The Mental health Inventory (MHI)developed by Dr.Jagdish Dr.A.K.Srivastava (1983)
2.Life stress Inventory by Holems and Rahe (1967 )
3. The depression Anxiety and stress Scales (DASS) Whilst Lovibond and lovibond’s (1995)
Statistical Analysis
Descriptive statistics, Chi-square, Fishers’s exact test, two-way mixed-design MANOVA,independent t-test, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) Effect size has been computed and Pearson correlation between variables is performed were used to analyze the data, based on the on the were used to assumptions of statics.


Result and Discussion.
A significant difference was observed among 3 selected groups in their mean life stress scores, where F- value of 471.69 was found to be highly significant. The mean life stress scores of 3 groups-general, newly joined and experienced are 214.71, 157.51 and 128.27 respectively. Further, Schaffer’s post hoc test indicated that general group experienced maximum stress, followed by newly joined group and those who were put in 2 and more years of experience in Vipasana had least stress scores. All the multiple comparisons of mean differences were found to be significant. Further, between male and female respondents also a significant difference was observed in their mean stress scores (F=87.36; P=.000), where male respondents experienced significantly higher stress (mean 177.96) than female respondents (mean 155.91). Lastly the interaction between group and gender was found to be significant (F=38.147; P=.000), where we find that among newly joined respondents, no difference was observed between male and female respondents, and in rest of the groups male respondents had high stress scores than female respondents.
Conclusion
1. There is significant impact of Vipasana mediation on mental health and life stress.
2. There is a significant difference between men and women Vipasana meditation participants and non participants.
3. There is significant difference between mental health of Vipasana participants and non Vipasana participants.
4. There is significant difference between life stress of Vipasana participants and non Vipasana participants.
5. There is a significant relationship between Vipasana meditation, mental health and life stress.
6. There is significant impact of Vipasana meditation, mental health and life stress on age.



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Note: According to UGC Regulation I am published bellow mentioned two papers related to my PhD topic.
1.Chandrakant Srimant and Professor S.P.Melkeri (Aug-2010).Impact of Vipasana Medtation Life stress ‘Orient Journal of Law and Social Sciences,Vol-iv,issue-9, 87-90.
2. Chandrakant Srimant and Professor S.P.Melkeri (Dec-2010).Effect of Vipasana Meditation on Mental Health ‘Gorakhpur Socia