What is Vipassana meditation? What is it to watch the breath?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Acharya Prashant (AP): That which you call “Vipassana” today, is a very recent phenomenon. They claim that it comes from the Buddha, actually, it is not. The stream flowing from Buddha got extinct around the 8th or 10th century AD. This modern Vipassana came up in Burma, just…