Right now I'm in the process of trying to access the Jhanas, or more importantly put, trying to build my concentration.. Ok, so I've been messing around with some things mostly breathing meditation to do this also used a statue of the buddha as a kasina and whatnot, I came across these 3 guided meditations that use simple visualizations of the body and mind as the object of meditation. (Not sure if this is like tantra, I have read things like this in some books discussing tantra or vajrayana though). But basically the three meditations are as follows:

1) You imagine your body dissolving into clear light, resembling "empty-like space", and meditate on this feeling
2) You imagine your mind being completely clear, watching thoughts and sensations come and go like clouds in the sky, but the mind itself remains formless, colorless, clear, intangible, etc. (This seems basically a vipassana meditation of just observing thoughts arising and passing, which begs the questions in my mind:
a) Is this good because it kills two birds with one stone?
b) Is this bad because it may take away from my primary concern in this meditation: to build concentration
3) The last meditation is a meditation on the "root mind", imaging it in your heart chakra and imagining it to be clear awareness, allowing thoughts to dissolve into it, bring peace, etc. etc., you probably know the deal.

So does anyone have any experience with using meditations such as these for the purpose of building concentration? It should be noted that I am not trying to calm my charkas or energy paths, not trying to practice vipassana, but my main concern is to build concentration. Having said that, any of these would be a nice and welcome side effect given they do not compromise their primary purpose, to build concentration. Also, I should mention I'm relatively weak in concentration, I can't really access any of the jhanas, at all, yet (I believe I've done it a few times in the past sporadically, but didn't realize it at the time).

OK, so who's got answers ?

Fuck 'em.

The breath. That's your answer. That's all you need.

Breath counting is ideal, you can do it anywhere and it will boost your concentration if you do it properly. No question.

If you want to go down the visual route, try something like tattwa cards; they're just geometric shapes in certain colours but they're useful and simple.

I like that answer, and I'll second it (based solely on subjective experience).

I used to use a mantra meditation combined with a visualization for twenty years making little progress before I tried the Buddha's simple technique of anapanasati. Once I understood anapanasati and how it worked, I began to have almost immediate positive results contacting the pleasantness of the breath.

Visualization techniques, in my humble opinion and experience, have been for me just a red herring, feel-good technique that can tend to misdirect the mind during meditation. Now, I must caution, these are only my own findings, and as the advertisements say, "results may vary." While visualization may help with developing concentration, if you want to achieve what Gotama achieved (namely, the end of suffering), you have to follow his instruction and advice.

Use visualization at your own discretion. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Try breath meditation (become familiar with and learn about anapanasati first) when all else fails. It's time tested, and "mother nature" approved!

Totally agreed, breath counting is great. It's also lots of fun. Here's one technique I learned that worked well for me:

You'll see this practice listed in nearly every book on breath meditation. I got it from an intro to Zen course.

Count all in breaths and out breaths from 1 to 10 and then start again at 1. If you miss any or are not sure of the next count or your mind went on auto-pilot and you weren't paying attention for a count or a breath, go back to 1. It doesn't matter if you miss counts or breaths, that's normal.

Once you consistently are counting all in and out breaths (let's say that you go a whole week where you're consistently hitting everything), stop counting the in breaths and just count out breaths.

Once that consistently works, see how following the breath without counting works.

You can also use counting for walking meditation. You can do stretches of breath counting (30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour, whatever you're comfortable with) and then switch to a set period of walking meditation, and then go back to another session of breath counting.

Btw, do you feel vibrations when you meditate? Let us know when you do, not that there's any sort of rush in that.

Whatever practice you choose, don't forget to take time to enjoy it. That's especially important when doing samatha. If meditation isn't fun, you might find that it isn't worth doing. I've even had fun while in the dukha ñanas.

While I can imagine a few circumstances and places in very specific people's practice where I might give wide-open instructions like that (such as someone in Equanimity who had a lot of meditation firepower but just couldn't back off enough to let stream entry happen, i.e. too much effort, not enough width), in general for someone with weaker skills I don't recommend more Dzogchen-like techniques such as those, as people just tend to space out, and particularly if your goal is concentration, pick something to concentrate on.

Now, as above, the breath is totally a great object, no question, but if your goal is pure concentration some will sometimes find it a bit vague and not that interesting, and a formal kasina object is traditional and should satisfy conservatives and liberals here alike when it comes purely to your goal of developing strong concentration: instructions available in many places, such as Bhante Gunaratana's The Path of Serenity and Insight.

That said, as above, the breath is a classic for many, many reasons and if you can find it and stay with it: do that.