Sorry for the late reply.
Patrice Berube:
End in Sight:
I am not sure what Goenka meditators are doing or not doing. After the 10 day course, I spoke to many of the students; some described experiencing "sankharas" (clouds of tension that could be reduced via attention) but many did not.
What do you mean?
Those people don't have butterfly in their stomach when faced with a situation (or a thought about a situation) that they are nervous about? like talking in public?
Those people don't feel a pain in their heart when they see or think of something they consider sad?
everyone have emotional responses to our environment. Weather they can perceive all of them or not, and weather they can recognize them for what they are or not. no?
imo non meditators just cannot perceive the insanely more subtle ones, they can only perceive the real big ones.
the subtler ones remain on the subconscious level and affect their behaviors and thoughts.
What I meant was that, many meditators do not realize that their emotional reactions are body sensations + (emotionally neutral) thoughts. They often believe that body sensations are one thing, and emotions are another...and while it may be believed that emotions and the thinking surrounding emotions may be connected to body sensations, it is also believed that emotions and emotion-related thinking stand alone and are affectively charged in themselves.
In cases like that, they may think things such as: "Goenka's technique is so limited, because it does not address all the feelings and emotions that come up for me in the course of meditation!"
If you can see that the thing that gives your feelings and emotions "heft" is the body sensations that come up in relation to thoughts, you are doing something (in terms of perception) that they are not. If you can attend to these feelings in a way that drains them away, your are doing something (in terms of practice) that they are not.
Patrice Berube:
My goal is to be able to be free from suffering (getting rid of all of the negative emotional reactions), but to do so as easily as possible (easier to do with the different perspective on life that comes with MCT

..
Wonderful!
Patrice Berube:
To answer the question, i'm not satisfied with simply getting rid of shankaras, i want to finish the paths if possible. I see this as a education, a technical thing like learning maths and getting a degree. seeing the things i need to see to realize certain key important points about myself and reality.
My personal opinion about this (and it is not well-validated, just my best guess given what I know) is that, if you keep draining away sankharas, and you do it
assiduously, and find the most efficient way to bring sankharas up, and find the most efficient way to get rid of them when they arise, you will likely get the MCTB paths.
In my opinion, it's extremely likely that you will get stream entry, but only reasonably likely that you will get 4th path. However, again, I do not know for sure.
The funny thing is, if you follow the method of getting rid of sankharas, you may not realize what paths you get other than stream entry. The way that people evaluate the paths they've gotten is by trying to figure out what in their experience they identify with. As every sankhara generates a bunch of stuff to identity with, one who observes them will never be able to stand back and say: "Aha! I don't identify with any of this!", because they will see that whatever sankhara they experience is an identification of some kind.
I consider that to be a good feature, because it keeps you focused on the goal of the end of suffering (= the end of all identification whatsoever), by keeping you honest about where identification remains.
Speaking for myself, I found that doing his practice made me cycle round and round the progress of insight...but, I always cycle round and round the progress of insight, so aside from the fact that it was more prominent than when not on retreat, I'm not sure what to say about its relationship with his method, except that navigating through the nanas is compatible with his method.
Patrice Berube:
End in Sight:
As I said, I do not know if what arises in the practice of Goenka's technique can be translated into MCTB's terms in a straightforward way, so I declined to offer a specific guess about that.
What is different?
What do MTCB observe that i did not observe?
Well, what I meant was that Goenka and MCTB part ways very quickly in terms of mapping, at least given the material I heard on the 10 day course.
When Goenka talks about observing subatomic particles arise and pass, he is surely talking about A&P.
However, when he talks about total dissolution (bhanga), that does not seem to have anything to do with MCTB Dissolution, as the criterion is whether one observes the entirety of one's body (including the insides) arising and passing (which is like A&P on steroids, and is probably not required to pass through the nanas or get stream entry).
He never talked about anything that sounded like MCTB Equanimity to me during the 10 day course.
As for how to get MCTB paths...if you want to use the typical instructions, the main thing to do during the A&P is to notice vibrations as precisely as possible. Simply sit, observe the skin, and notice vibrations with equanimity. The more equanimity, the less agitation, the better your concentration may become, the faster the vibrations become...eventually that gets you through the A&P.
For the dark night, most people do well by observing vibrations in the body, and observing negative emotional states. However, insofar as you can see that negative emotional states are vibrations in the body, you are back to noticing the body.
So, I would say that insofar as you can observe vibrations easily and precisely, it seems that not very much distinguishes Goenka and MCTB at this particular point in your practice.
One important instruction (which I believe Nick, who had a long history of sitting Goenka courses, has pointed out) is to notice the way that attention constantly "bounces" between generic vibrations on the body and various regions such as the head (etc.) which are connected to a sense of self. This is absolutely required...however, in my experience, it appears that this bouncing phenomenon is equivalent to what Goenka means by "sankharas" (regions in which there is some kind of negative self-y experience that draws the attention). But it appears that many people miss that. So, you should make sure that you see that phenomenon very clearly, as it is related to the fundamental problem of suffering (why this is may become clearer in time).
One thing to keep in mind is that my opinion of Goenka has been formed very late in my practice...I have a very high opinion of his methods, but I might think quite differently about their effectiveness if I were still trying for stream entry. So, you would do well to solicit some opinions from other practitioners who had more experience with Goenka early on in their practice, as they may be able to give you various useful pointers, as well as a potentially different perspective. The posters on this forum who fit the bill are Nick, Tarin, and Jill.
Overall, I would say, keep noticing vibrations, keep drawing out and eliminating the sankharas that come up, you can probably do both at once, and so good things of all kinds will come to you via that practice. In terms of attaining MCTB stream entry, the main thing is probably to give the process more time, while practicing assiduously and with dedication.
As I don't know where you stand now in terms of practice (it may have changed in the last few days, and it probably changed post-retreat), why don't you start a practice thread and let us know what your meditation is like currently, so we can give you much more specific advice with respect to navigating the progress of insight.
(EDIT: Of course, this is your practice thread. Duh. In that case, it would be good if you posted details of your current experiences in meditation, post-retreat, from the last few days.)