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In his book "Coming to Our Senses" Jon Kabat-Zinn makes some useful distinctions to help us see the difference between meditation per se, and the methods, techniques, tools and toys that are associated with meditation practice.
This page of the website is devoted to what he calls "Scaffolding":
"Just as we need scaffolding to build a building, just as scaffolding was needed for Michelangelo and his apprentices to paint the frescos on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so we need a certain kind of framework to bring us to the essence of this inner work, right at the edge of this in-breath, this out-breath, this body, this moment.
But just as when the building is built or the ceiling completed, the scaffolding is no longer needed and comes down, never having been part of the essence of the endeavor, simply a necessary and useful means for furthering it, so with meditation, the very scaffolding of instructions and framework is dismantled… and only the impalpable, wordless essence remains, the essence being wakefulness itself, beyond and underneath, "before" thinking even arises.
Meditative scaffolding is needed in every moment, and by the same token, it needs to be dismantled in every moment, not later, at the end of some great work, such as the Sistine Chapel, but moment by moment. This is accomplished by knowing that it is merely scaffolding, however necessary and important, and not becoming attached to it.
With the Sistine Chapel, the scaffolding may need to be kept in storage, or resurrected for touching up, for restoration, repair of fine-tuning over the years. But in the case of meditation, the masterpiece is always in progress and at the same time always complete in each moment, like life itself"
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