Vipassanā

Vipassanā (Pāli) or vipaśyanā (Sanskrit) literally “special, super (Vi), seeing (Passanā)”, is a Buddhist term that is often translated as “insight”. The Pali Canon describes it as one of two qualities of mind which is developed in bhāvanā, the training of the mind, the other being samatha (mind calming). It is often defined as a practice that seeks “insight into the true nature of reality”, defined as anicca “impermanence”, dukkha “suffering, unsatisfactoriness”, anattā “non-self”, the three marks of existence in the Theravada tradition, and as śūnyatā “emptiness” and Buddha-nature in the Mahayana traditions.
Vipassanā practice in the Theravada tradition largely fell out of practice by the 10th century, but was reintroduced in Toungoo and Konbaung Burma in the 18th century, based on contemporary readings of the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta, the Visuddhimagga, and other texts. A new tradition developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, centering on ‘dry insight’ and downplaying samatha. It became of central importance in the 20th century Vipassanā movement as developed by Ledi Sayadaw and U Vimala and popularised by Mahasi Sayadaw, V. R. Dhiravamsa, and S. N. Goenka.In modern Theravada, the combination or disjunction of vipassanā and samatha is a matter of dispute. While the Pali sutras hardly mention vipassanā, describing it as a mental quality alongside samatha which develops in tandem and leads to liberation, the Abhidhamma Pitaka and the commentaries describe samatha and vipassanā as two separate techniques, taking samatha to mean concentration-meditation. The Vipassanā movement favors vipassanā over samatha, but some critics point out that both are necessary elements of the Buddhist training, while other critics argue that dhyana is not a single-pointed concentration exercise.