Goode 1 Noah Goode Annotated Bibliography

Fox, Douglas A. Meditation & Reality: A Critical View. Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1986. Book.

Dr. Foxs book is a summary of meditation as a worldwide practice. I think itll be of use to me as it discusses meditation forms from all over the world, not just the Buddhist discipline that I am familiar with. It also contains the opinions of Sigmund Freud and other scholars in the field of psychology. This is important to me because since meditation is so closely linked to religion, information from psychologists is harder to find. He also examines the link between different religions and their respective forms of meditation. This will familiarize me with the different disciplines I will have to study to fully understand the effects of meditation as a whole. I believe that Dr. Fox is a credible source due to his teaching position and an accredited school and the Th.D. he received from Berkley. His other books also include information on meditation.

Ospina, Maria. Meditation Practices For Health: State of the Research.

This source will be valuable because it is a study on recorded research about meditation. The writer(s) of this document werent the actual researchers performing the experiments. However, they break down numerous research projects into five different types of meditation, and list the results of said experiments. This will help me

Goode 2 tremendously, as it will show me what types of meditation there are and how effective they are. This allows me to see what kind of research is going on about this subject. It was prepared for the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, so they are obviously legitimately impartial parties, with a neutral agenda. No researcher had any financial links to any groups studied which I think is very important to the validity of the research. It also gives me a good idea of what kind of results Im going to find in the area of meditation research.

Wallace, B. Alan. Mind In the Balance. New York, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Book.

In Mind In the Balance, B. Alan Wallace discusses the history of meditation and its application in everyday life. His book is broken down into alternative practice and theory chapters, thus taking this abstract religious idea and putting it into simplified scientific terms. He explains why meditation has always almost been considered a pseudo-science and is just now getting scientific recognition. He points out the various benefits that meditation can offer the most average people. I think this will be a good source because Wallace explains not only in what ways meditation can benefit a person, but also how it would help someone in their life. B. Alan Wallace is quite possibly the most qualified author Ive found to write a book on meditation. While not only holding a Ph.D. in religious studies from Stanford, he also has a bachelors in physics and the philosophy of science. This makes him qualified to talk about the spiritual aspects, as well as the scientific, physical aspects of the subject,

Goode 3 and the connections between the two. He also studied under the Dalai Lama, who is the utmost authority, and holy figure, of Tibetan Buddhism. I look forward to using this book, because it also strikes me that I can benefit myself from picking it apart for research.

West, Michael A. The Psychology of Meditation

Michael Wests book discusses meditations effect on the human brain. The study uses EEG scans as well as other clinical trials to determine physical effects. The book is divided into four parts: 1) History and information about meditation 2) The physiological effects as well as its effect on personality change 3) Meditation as psychotherapy and 4) An overview of research in the field of meditation. I believe that this will be the source that is of the most use to me, as it not only discusses brainwaves and such, but also using meditation as a treatment for existing conditions. I believe that it will be a credible source, due to the research being done at major English universities, as well as Mr. Wests title of Research Fellow in the psychology unit of Sheffield University. I think that this is the best source of information I have found thus far.

Yang, Ke-Ping. The Effect of Meditation on Physical and Mental Health in Junior College Students: A Quasi-Experimental Study.

In this study, Ke-Ping studied two groups of junior college students, one who

Goode 4 meditated, and the other who did not. The results of the study showed that meditation was beneficial to the mental and physical health of the students. This will be helpful to me because it gives more scientific evidence in support of meditations positive effect on the human body. The source seems legitimate because it was published in a medical journal put out by the Taiwan Nurses Association.

Zeidan, Fadel. The Effects of Brief Mindfulness Meditation Training on Mood, Cognitive, and Cardiovascular Variables.

Zeidans research on meditation is discussed in this dissertation. His research was solely on the practices effect on the body, physically. He uses a highly controlled scientific experiment to explore this question. In it he finds that meditation did, in fact, positively affect the experiment groups cognitive abilities. He used a control group listening to a book reading as a comparison. This source could be quite valuable to me as it is a scientific study on the question that I am asking: Does meditation affect the body? I believe that Zeidans research is legitimate as this study was done at UNCC as a part of his Ph.D. program. Since it was published, it was obviously approved by the graduate board and thus a legitimate resource.