Vipassana And Its Effect On Mindfulness And Subjective Well-being

Mindfulness is a concept brought by Zinn which has its role in the Eastern spiritual traditions. It has been developed into varies kinds of mindfulness meditation and is long believed to promote mental health, do good to one's work and life, and thus promote well-being. Vipassna is a traditional mindfulness meditation lacked of reseach attention. This paper intented to access the role of vipassana in promoting one's mindfulness as well as subjective well-being and discuss the mechanism, thus examineed whether it is an effective way in raising level of mental health for Chinese people.Quasi-experimental research, survey research and interview research were combined in this research. Quasi-experimental research using longitudinal approach intented to know the changes in mindfulness and subjective well-being before and after vipassana meditation. Survey research using cross-sectional approach intented to compare the difference in mindfulness and subjective well-being between vipassana meditators and those demographic similar ones without vipassna experience. Interviews were done to know the characteristic of vipassana meditators and helped to understand the mechanism of why vipassana meditation can promote subjective well-being. The main results showed as follows:There kinds of people make up the vipassana meditatiors:Buddhist, those interesting in spiritual or done work relating to it and those influenced by the first two kinds. Main perpose to learn vipassana include promoting Buddhist practice, being curious about it and longing to resolve their problems.Expect for Describe which has no relationship with the concept of vipassna, vipassana meditators get higher scores on the total score of FFMQ as well as score in each dimension than those without vipassna experience. For vipassan meditators, those learning longer time and spending more time to practice get even higher scores.Vipassna meditators get higher scores on subjective well-being than those without vipassana experience.Mindfulness is the mediator variable between vipassana experience (independent variable) and subjective well-being (dependent variable). On the one hand vipassana is a kind of meditation asking one to focus on his or her breath as well as body sensations, thus can make one face his or her inner self and help to maintain good physical and mental condition. On the other hand, though training on equanimity, people would be wiser in their lives.Vipassna meditation is a systematic and useful way to everyone except those with severe mental health problems which can do good to one's physical as well as mental health and promote their quality of life.