Seek nothing, just sit.
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Your comment reminded me of this sutta, which seems to suggest that mindfulness of the loathesomeness of the body and immersive states lead to different outcomes for the practitioner:
The suttas describe the suffusion of pleasant feeling throughout the body as a conscious process, it doesn’t just happen. It’s interesting that a mental image is used as a starting point for a bodily feeling:
“Furthermore, quite withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful mental qualities, he enters & remains in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. He permeates & pervades, suffuses & fills this very body with the rapture & pleasure born from withdrawal. Just as if a skilled bathman or bathman’s apprentice would pour bath powder into a brass basin and knead it together, sprinkling it again & again with water, so that his ball of bath powder — saturated, moisture-laden, permeated within & without — would nevertheless not drip; even so, the monk permeates… this very body with the rapture & pleasure born of withdrawal. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture & pleasure born from withdrawal. And as he remains thus heedful, ardent, & resolute, any memories & resolves related to the household life are abandoned, and with their abandoning his mind gathers & settles inwardly, grows unified & centered. This is how a monk develops mindfulness immersed in the body.”—Majhima Nikaya 119
Indeed, because it’s the mind that tranquilizes the body
When you live with the eye faculty restrained, your mind doesn’t become polluted when it comes to sights known by the eye. When the mind isn’t polluted, joy springs up. Being joyful, rapture springs up. When the mind is full of rapture, the body becomes tranquil. When the body is tranquil, one feels bliss.
- SN 35.97
Controlling the mind makes the body feel tranquil.
The Buddha has mastery of thoughts
"Master Gotama thinks whatever thought he wants to think, and doesn’t think any thought he doesn’t want to think. He wills any resolve he wants to will, and doesn’t will any resolve he doesn’t want to will. He has attained mastery of the mind with regard to the pathways of thought.
- AN 4.35
Anyone who has mastery of thoughts can get piti, sukha and jhana on demand
First you’ll reflect on these eight thoughts of a great man. Then whenever you want, quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unskillful qualities, you’ll enter and remain in the first absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of seclusion, while placing the mind and keeping it connected.
- AN 8.30
Right view → Proper Attention → Thought mastery → Overcoming 5 hindrances → pamojja → piti in mind → passadhi in body → sukha → samadhi → ñāṇadassana (knowledge/insight)
Mind is the forerunner
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My personal reading.
In MN62 we have a reference to breath
winds that go up or down, winds in the belly or the bowels, winds that flow through the limbs, in-breaths and out-breaths, or anything else that’s air, airy, and appropriated that’s internal, pertaining to an individual.
uddhaṅgamā vātā, adhogamā vātā, kucchisayā vātā, koṭṭhāsayā vātā, aṅgamaṅgānusārino vātā, assāso passāso iti, yaṁ vā panaññampi kiñci ajjhattaṁ paccattaṁ vāyo vāyogataṁ upādinnaṁ
Just plain old air. The same stuff that hit your face when the car window is turned down.
In the context of “parimukhaṁ satiṁ upaṭṭhapetvā, so satova assasati, satova passasati”,
Mukha is to assasa/passasa as eye is to forms. Due to individual differences just parimukham is stated without being specific.
From a personal,practical point of view, I read ‘parimukha’ as ‘ārammana mukha’ or in other words ‘sense door’. What i mean by that is this, by way of a similar example. Feel the thumb on one hand. Feeling further it is possible to sense micro draughts of air , even in a still room. The skin or the area of touch is the door of sense, so to speak.
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