> Vipassana is actually quite a new tradition
Hmm, no not really.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassan%C4%81)
It's dealt with in a couple of the Pali suttas afaik.
Re:My first ten-day Vipassana retreat
by lewispollard on Thursday January 14, 2016 @09:26AM
(#10901525)
One can interpret certain suttas as showing the Vipassana noting technique, but it's not explicitly pointed out in an instructional way, so it's hard to say if it's not a later interpretation of the text used to justify a newer practice that developed in Burma and Sri Lanka.
The explanation Goenka gives is that the technique of noting was passed down from teacher to teacher all the way back to the Buddha, but of course every tradition says this about every technique so it can be hard to verify.
Today, large chunk of Buddhism (well Mahayana (Chinese buddhism) and Vajrayana (Tibetan buddhism) at least) is practiced in societies where there was never Hinduism in the first place.
So it mixed with the local religions instead and what we get in China, Japan, Korea is mix of local religious traditions and Buddhism.
Theravada ("Sri Lanka and company" buddhism) seems to me closer to the "actual" original Buddhism, but really I was never in any Theravada majority place for a longer time, so I don't know
Vipassana is actually quite a new tradition, as is for example Japanese zen as we know it now (from what I can gather, it was sort of a reaction to Meiji reforms in Japan that violently separated Shinto and Buddhist traditions, not that long ago).