A and B Meditation

Kenneth,

In your batgap interview, you seemed to say 1st gear is the only path toward nibanna. Or, maybe you didn't say that.. You divided meditation into "A Meditation" and "B Meditation". Are you equating B meditation with 1st gear? If not, what other types of meditation are included as B meditations, for instance, self inquiry of shikantaza?

jackhat1 wrote: Kenneth, In your batgap interview, you seemed to say 1st gear is the only path toward nibanna. Or, maybe you didn't say that.. You divided meditation into "A Meditation" and "B Meditation". Are you equating B meditation with 1st gear? If not, what other types of meditation are included as B meditations, for instance, self inquiry of shikantaza?

Hi Jack, thanks for the question.

Type A meditation is aimed at achieving an immediate result, usually in the form of a state. Type B meditation aims at finding out what's going on, moment by moment, in realtime, with the ultimate goal of awakening.

When you meditate to become concentrated or calm, you are doing type A meditation. You know if you are doing it right if you get concentrated or calm. If you fail to get concentrated or calm, the meditation session is a failure.

Meditation B, on the other hand, doesn't care what state you are in. The only metric for success in the short term is the extent to which you know what is happening while it's happening. If you are anxious and know you're anxious, you are doing it right. This is empowering because it means that even a distracted, sleepy, or agitated meditation session can be a success as long as you know you are distracted, sleepy, or agitated as it's happening.

Both meditation type A and meditation type B are good, and they support each other. It's great to be able to calm down through meditation or put yourself in an altered state, or to cultivate metta or compassion. All these are meditation type A. It's also great to wake up to something in your experience that was flying under the radar a moment ago; bringing experience into conscious awareness is awakening, and this is what meditation type B is all about.

This distinction between meditation types A and B is similar to the distinction between concentration and vipassana. I'm framing it slightly differently in order to make the categories more flexible. With the A and B categories, we can say that any meditation aimed at achieving a state in the short term is meditation type A. This includes mantra, gazing at an object, dwelling as the witness, cultivating a thought-free mind, etc. You can even extend the general concept to see that meditation type A is a subset of something we do all the time in non-medititative ways, when we attempt to manipulate our experience through chemicals (caffeine, alcohol, opiates, THC, etc.) or other means (television, exercise, fantasy, sex, reading). Much of what we do all day long is aimed at making us feel a certain way, and meditation type A can be seen as a sophisticated way to influence our experience.

Any meditation object can be approached through either the A or B lens. For example, you can follow the breath with the intention of becoming calm, and even entering a trance state, which would be a type A practice. Or you can follow your breath with the intention of carefully noticing the sensations, thoughts, and other experiences that are happening in real time, which would be a type B practice. In both cases, we're using a 1st gear object, the breath. The difference is that in the first instance we're doing first gear with a type A focus on manipulating our experience to become calmer, and in the second case we're doing first gear with the type B focus on insight and awakening.

Self-enquiry, a second gear practice, can also be approached as either type A or type B; if you cultivate a trance-like witness state, you are doing 2nd gear type A. If you carefully observe the phenomena that arise in the mind and body while asking "who am I," you are doing 2nd gear type B.

And a third gear practice like "gazing at the clear light of awareness" (a Mahamudra practice à la Tilopa) can also be done as type A or type B. If you cultivate a state that you call awareness-of-awareness, for example, you are doing meditation type A. If you then investigate that same state to see which phenomena of mind and body are arising to create the state, you are doing type B.

Notice that each time we move from type A meditation to type B, we are vipassanizing the state. We are turning a lens into an object. States are recognizable one from the other because they are repeatable constellations of phenomena to which we can apply a label. I know anger from anxiety, and joy from bliss because each of those states is repeatable and distinct; each has it's own complex and recognizable flavor. When I feel joyful, but don't investigate further, there is a filter (joy) coloring the experience, but not being seen as a filter. If I then turn the attention toward the filter itself, lighting up the composite phenomenon of joy and identifying its component parts, I have objectified (made an object of) the lens of joy. This objectification, iteratively and momentarily lighting up experience with attention, is the fundamental mechanism of awakening.

Also notice that it's not an either-or situation; you can both cultivate a state (type A meditation) and investigate that state (type B meditation). An example of this would be cultivating metta while also doing vipassana (investigation) on the sensations, mind states, and thoughts that arise while cultivating metta.

I like the A/B conceptual framework because it clarifies certain questions that arise for almost everybody. For example,

Q: How do I know if the practice I'm doing leads to awakening?
A: Type B practices lead to awakening. Type A practices do not.
Q: Does that mean I should avoid type A practices?
A: Not at all. It's incredibly valuable to be able to calm the mind or enter altered states. These states are useful for their own sake; they are interesting, pleasant, educational, etc. And they also support, enhance, and provide platforms for type B practices that directly lead to awakening in both the short and long term.

Here is a narrative:

Siddhattha Gotama, dissatisfied with his pampered life, leaves his home and family to wander in the forest as a renunciate. He starves himself in an effort to transcend his human weaknesses. He also practices concentration (meditation type A), seeks out the greatest meditation masters of his time, and learns their techniques. He becomes a great concentration master in his own right, gaining access to subtle and exquisite states of joy, bliss, and equanimity, surpassing even his teachers in attaining altered states of consciousness. But he is not satisfied. Even the most exquisite states end, leaving Gotama suffering as before. He abandons his group of fellow meditators, eats his way back to health, and sits down under a tree to contemplate his dissatisfaction.

While paying careful attention to his own experience in real time, not attempting to cultivate any state, Gotama realizes that everything is changing (anicca), that he can't find an "I" or self as the ultimate knower of experience (anatta), and that as long as there is experience, there is no resolution, no lasting satisfaction (dukkha). He has awakened to the universal nature of experience. He sees things as they are (dhamma). He sees that experience cannot, by its very nature, resolve. The only resolution to experience is the end of experience (nibbana).

By investigating his own experience in the present moment, rather than trying to manipulate it, Gotama has discovered meditation type B. He has brought into conscious awareness aspects of experience that had previously flown under the radar. He has awakened, and is thereafter known as the Awakened One (Buddha).

Gotama spends the rest of his life teaching others to awaken through a comprehensive program of morality (sila), concentration (samadhi), and insight (paññā).

Looking back, we might observe that the Buddha's greatest contribution to the literature was meditation type B in the form of vipassana meditation. After all, he did not discover morality training. Nor did the Buddha discover or add much if anything to the practice of concentration meditation; the eight concentration states (jhana) he taught were the same ones his teachers had taught him. We might even say that the Buddha debunked concentration meditation (meditation type A) as a freestanding technology of awakening, and showed that awakening only happens when we put more emphasis on investigating experience than on manipulating it.

Hi, Kenneth,

You seem to have some historical revisionism happening here.

What the Buddha learned from his teachers was formless jhana. The form jhanas he had already discovered for himself in his youth. Moreover, the *intentional* cultivation of the form jhanas was an integral part of his awakening. Having reached the fourth jhana, he directed (again, intentionally) his mind toward three specific knowledges, viz., (1) the knowledge of recollecting his past lives; (2) the knowledge of the passing away and reappearance of beings; (3) the knowledge of the ending of the aasavas. In other words, this was *not* choiceless awareness.

All of the above is summarized from MN 36. Something resembling vipassana (as we understand it today) is credited to Sariputta in MN 111, but this is by no means dry insight, since jhana is, again, an integral part of it.

>And a third gear practice like "gazing at the clear light of awareness" (a Mahamudra practice à la Tilopa) can also be done as type A or type B. If you cultivate a state that you call awareness-of-awareness, for example, you are doing meditation type A. If you then investigate that same state to see which phenomena of mind and body are arising to create the state, you are doing type B.<

Kenneth, thanks for the response. I do a meditation where, to quote a Tibetan instruction, I find where samadhi (concentration) and vipassana (seeing) meet and rest there. I stay very aware of phenomena that arise. Is this awareness, investigating? Investigating to me implies a conscious effort which is counter to this type of meditation. What do you mean by "investigating" in your quote above?

Ron Burbea seems to treat investigation in a way that might be similar to your use. He says bare awarenes of phenomena has limited value. A more advanced practice is to look at phenomena with certain lenses, for instance as not-self.