So on the 24th of october I'm taking my first 10-day retreat. This will be followed hopefully by another 7-14 day retreat in november or early december and then a 3 month retreat I plan on taking around mid december (just waiting for visa to go through).
So alot of people have gone on Goenka retreats. I'm really pumped. I've been working towards jhana attainment lately. I know that Goenka does 3 days (i think) of Anapana Sati meditation and then the rest of the retreat is body scanning Vipassana. If it were up to me, I would just spend the whole of the 10 days working on concentration. I really want to have a stable foundation in concentration before I start up with Vipassana again. SO, and I think I already know the answer to this, should I follow retreat instructions and do body scanning the whole time regardless? I mean, when I come back, I'll probably go right back to doing shamatha for a little while longer, so will it even be worthwhile to make progress in vipassana, and then go back to shamatha anyway. But I also realize and am mostly leaning towards that its just best to follow the instructions given to you in a retreat. So what are the thoughts and opinions of the members of the forum to make this retreat of most benefit to myself in the short- and long-term? Thanks
