Article by Gil Fronsdal.
Among the various and varied Buddhist meditative disciplines taught in the United States, Insight Meditation, or vipassana, has been, since the early 1980s, one of the fastest growing in popularity. To a great extent this can be attributed to the practice being offered independent of much of its traditional Theravada Buddhist religious context. This autonomy has allowed the American vipassana teachers and students to adapt and present the meditation practice in forms and language that are much more thoroughly Westernized than most other forms of Buddhism in America. As the number of people participating in the mindfulness practices of Insight Meditation has increased, a loose-knit lay Buddhist movement, uniquely Western, that is sometimes known as the "vipassana movement," has evolved.
