On Monday I’m headed to a retreat center in Wisconsin for my third 10 day retreat. I’ll have access to teachers while I’m there, but it’s not a guided retreat. I’ll be pretty much free to do my thing. So I’m wondering how I should structure things. Normally in an hour sit I’ll start with anapanasati for 20 minutes or so then switch to Mahasi style vipassana, throwing in a few Goenka scans for good measure. On days where I’m practicing a lot I sometimes end the day with some fire kasina as well.
So I could just keep doing my thing just a lot more of it or I could switch things up. A lot of the time vipassana centers will have you do anapanasati exclusively for a few days and then switch you to vipassana. So it seems like that would be an approach to consider. I could try to get about as concentrated as I think is possible for me then start scanning and noting.
Given that I don’t want to do a full on fire kasina retreat would it be beneficial to do it for a couple hours each night or would that be pulling me in too many directions?
Another idea I’ve been playing with would be to go full anapanasati and see if I can get some experience navigating the jhanas.
What do y’all think?
