| | From the perspective of the "modern syncretic insight tradition" (MSIT) it's quite hard to see the difference between any other traditions that have something that looks like vipassana meditation at their core. MSIT looks at them, sees the vipassana-like practice, and glosses over all the other differences as cultural or literary or mythological artifacts which are irrelevant to the core of the tradition.
Whether this is reasonable or not, I don't know, but it's easy to lose sight of the fact that many reasonable adherents of those other traditions could say that MSIT is being unfair to their tradition, or missing the point of their tradition. Even for Buddhism, MSIT ignores a lot that a traditional Buddhist could reasonably claim is central to Buddhism. For instance, MSIT understands the First Noble Truth, "Life is suffering", to mean something like "life has a lot of shitty parts", or "nothing in life can be permanently satisfying". But there is lots in the scriptures which suggest a more radical interpretation:
"Magandiya, suppose that there was a leper covered with sores and infections, devoured by worms, picking the scabs off the openings of his wounds with his nails, cauterizing his body over a pit of glowing embers. His friends, companions, & relatives would take him to a doctor. The doctor would concoct medicine for him, and thanks to the medicine he would be cured of his leprosy: well & happy, free, master of himself, going wherever he liked. Then suppose two strong men, having grabbed him with their arms, were to drag him to a pit of glowing embers. What do you think? Wouldn't he twist his body this way & that? [...] In the same way, Magandiya, sensual pleasures in the past were painful to the touch, very hot & scorching; sensual pleasures in the future will be painful to the touch, very hot & scorching; sensual pleasures at present are painful to the touch, very hot & scorching; but when beings are not free from passion for sensual pleasures — devoured by sensual craving, burning with sensual fever — their faculties are impaired, which is why, even though sensual pleasures are actually painful to the touch, they have the skewed perception of 'pleasant.'" (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.075x.than.html)
A MSIT practitioner might claim that this is cultural or literary or mythological, because none of their practice, nor the practice of any other MSIT-practitioners they know, has ever led to this belief. For the enlightened person, MSIT claims, pleasant vedana is pleasant and unpleasant vedana is unpleasant, and that's that. On the other hand, MSIT practitioners generally don't follow the full range of traditional Buddhist practices: who concerns themselves with the entire Eightfold Path as much as they concern themselves with the last two parts, mindfulness and concentration? Who does all the contemplations of death, graveyards, festering corpses, repulsiveness, and so on that are constantly recommended (even in no less a place than the Satipatthana sutta!)? Who practices renunciation to the same extent that the homeless wandering bhikkus of Buddha's time did? Perhaps a person practicing in these ways would come to some further insight about how life is suffering, and no longer crave pleasant vedana because they see that pleasantness is somehow illusory. Or maybe not. I wouldn't know.
So, to answer your question as I see it, according to MSIT there is basically no difference, because MSIT sees all traditions as containing a vipassana-like practice with all kinds of cultural and literary and mythological ornamentation. If you think "they're all the same, so I'll just pick one to practice", you're not practicing the orthodox tradition, you're practicing MSIT. Why Buddhism is most popular is that Buddhism is apparently easier to transform into MSIT since Buddhism is very clear about how to do vipassana-like practices.
If you practice the orthodox traditions, however, you'll see lots of differences between them. Perhaps they even lead to different outcomes. Perhaps people, thinking that this is true, select one over the other based on what they think the best outcome is, or based on what they think the true nature of things is.
(None of this is to say that MSIT is or isn't right to boil all traditions down to a vipassana-like practice. I'm just calling things as I see them. MSIT is fantastic, but clarity about what we're doing and what we're not doing in our practice is also extremely important.) |