Vipassana movement
[web 1] The Burmese Vipassana movement has its roots in the 19th century, when Theravada Buddhism came to be influenced by western modernism,[2] and some monks tried to restore the Buddhist practice of meditation.
This includes institutions like the Insight Meditation Society and contemporary American Buddhist teachers such as Joseph Goldstein, Tara Brach, Gil Fronsdal, Sharon Salzberg, Ruth Denison, Shinzen Young, and Jack Kornfield.
[6] According to Braun, "the majority of Theravadins and dedicated Buddhists of other traditions, including monks and nuns, have focused on cultivating moral behavior, preserving the Buddha’s teachings (dharma), and acquiring the good karma that comes from generous giving.
[9] A major role was also being played by the Theosophical Society, which sought for ancient wisdom in south-East Asia, and stimulated local interest in its own traditions.
[11] A comparable development took place in Thailand, where the Buddhist orthodoxy was challenged by monks who aimed to reintroduce the practice of meditation, based on the Sutta Pitaka.
[18] In the latter approach, mindfulness, understood as "the awareness that arises by paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally", is the central practice, instead of Vipassana.
[note 4] The foundation for this progress is the meditation on the arising and passing away of all contemplated phenomena (anicca), which leads to an understanding of their unsatisfactory (dukkha) nature and insight into not-self (anatta).
[25] Psychology researchers differ as to whether an association exists between unpleasant meditation-related experiences and deconstructive meditation types; a recent study noted that their sample size was too small to draw definitive conclusions.
He asserted that Vipassana technique of meditation was originally espoused in Rigveda however lapsed after the Vedic era and was rejuvenated by Gautam Buddha.
Meditation centers teaching the Vipassanā popularized by S. N. Goenka exist now in Nepal, India, other parts of Asia, North and South America, Europe, Australia, Middle East and Africa.
[35] The "New Burmese Method" emphasizes the attainment of Vipassana, insight, by practising satipatthana, paying close attention to the ongoing changes in body and mind.
According to Gil Fronsdal: An important feature of the “Mahasi approach” is its dispensing with the traditional preliminary practice of fixed concentration or tranquilization (appana samadhi, samatha).
This was made possible through interpreting sati as a state of "bare awareness" — the unmediated, non-judgmental perception of things "as they are," uninflected by prior psychological, social, or cultural conditioning.
Mogok Sayadaw emphasized the importance of right understanding and that a meditator should learn the theory of Dependent Origination (Paticcasamuppada) when practicing Vipassana.
[34] Kornfield, and related teachers, tend to de-emphasize the religious elements of Buddhism such as "rituals, chanting, devotional and merit-making activities, and doctrinal studies" and focus on meditative practice.
According to Jack Kornfield, We wanted to offer the powerful practices of insight meditation, as many of our teachers did, as simply as possible without the complications of rituals, robes, chanting and the whole religious tradition.
[ambiguous] Others, like Bhikkhu Thannissaro, who trained in Thailand, criticise the Burmese orthodoxy, and propagate an integrative approach, in which samatha and Vipassana are developed in tandem.
A main criticism of the Burmese method is its reliance on the commentatorial literature, in which Vipassana is separated from samatha, and jhana is equated with concentration meditation.
[43] Polak, elaborating on Vetter, notes that the onset of the first dhyana is described as a quite natural process, due to the preceding efforts to restrain the senses and the nurturing of wholesome states.
These teachers and practitioners expand the framework of Vipassanā to incorporate the immanence of the female body and its innate opportunities for enlightenment through the cycles of its physiology and the emotions of marriage, childlessness, childbearing, child loss, and widowhood.
[49] The modern Bangladeshi teacher Dipa Ma, a student of Anagarika Munindra, was one of the first female Asian masters to be invited to teach in America.
As a widowed, single mother, Dipa Ma was a householder (non-monastic) who exemplified liberation and taught Vipassanā as not only a retreat practice but also a lifestyle.
Her message to women and men was you don't have to leave your family to reach high states of spiritual understanding, and she taught a radical inclusiveness.
Indian Shambhavi Chopra, a former textiles designer and divorced mother of two who is now co-director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies, writes of her 10-day Vipassanā meditation training at a retreat center in Germany in her book Yogini: The Enlightened Woman,[54] and encourages students to explore Vipassanā practice and mastery as a devotion to the Divine Mother of all.
One notable example was in 1993 when Kiran Bedi, a reformist Inspector General of India's prisons, learned of the success of Vipassanā in a jail in Jaipur, Rajasthan.
