When you practice meditation, your mind needs something to hold on to. This is called a “meditation word” (parikamma), like Buddho, “rising, falling,” or Samma Araham. It’s also called a “meditation object,” meaning the thing your mind stays tied to, focuses on, or rests on. You can use many things as a meditation object. In fact, you could say almost anything can be one. The Buddha recommended 40 of them, known as the 40 meditation objects:
10 Kasinas (focus objects): Earth, water, wind, fire, and the colors green, yellow, red, white, and light, plus open space. You use one of these as your meditation word or object.
10 Asubhas (the unattractive): Focusing on a dead body to see that it isn’t beautiful, in its different stages. For example, a bloated corpse, a corpse turning dark blue, a corpse leaking fluids, a corpse cut in half, a corpse eaten by animals, a corpse missing its hands, feet, and head, a corpse crawling with worms, and finally just a skeleton.
10 Recollections: Thinking about the Buddha, the Dhamma (his teachings), and the Sangha (the monks). Thinking about the moral precepts you keep and the gifts you have given. Thinking about the good qualities that lead to becoming a heavenly being. Thinking about death, which comes to everyone. Looking at the body and seeing that it isn’t beautiful. Being mindful of your breath going in and out, often called Anapanasati today. And thinking about the peace that comes when all mental impurities and suffering are gone, which is Nirvana.
4 Brahmaviharas (the four boundless qualities): Thinking with loving-kindness, compassion, joy for others, and calm balance, and spreading these out to all living beings of every kind. They have no limits, boundaries, or divisions of race or religion.
1 Seeing food as unattractive: Looking at food as just elements that exist naturally, not as a living being, a person, a self, “me,” or “them.” Food is unclean and naturally rots, and it rots now because of causes and conditions. Once it enters the body, which is already decaying, it rots even more. So you shouldn’t cling to it as a being, a person, a self, “me,” or “them.” See all food as just elements, without sorting it into this kind or that kind.
1 Analysis of the four elements: See the body as a combination of the four elements, earth, water, wind, and fire. It is not a living being, a person, a self, “me,” or “them.” It is unclean, naturally decays, and is decaying right now because of causes and conditions.
4 Formless states (Arupa): These are objects for people who have already reached deep meditation (jhana) but whose minds still need something to hold on to. They are: focusing on endless space, focusing on endless consciousness, focusing on the true existence of all things, and focusing on the state of “neither perception nor non-perception.”
Basic meditation for everyday people
If you look at all 40 meditation objects above, you’ll see that you can use everything around you as a meditation object. This includes earth, water, wind, fire, wood, light, colors, sounds, the air, cold and heat, everyday objects, your surroundings, your thoughts and feelings, past events, and feelings of pain or comfort. All of these can be meditation objects. In short, anything at all can be a meditation object. It just depends on what you choose to focus your mind on.