user10950: Meditation instructions generally reiterate focusing ones attention on the sensations of breath but attention can mean several things. It can mean placing attention on what you feel but what about what you see?  What I notice a lot is, what I can only describe as my "inner eye", wants to see or visualise something so it generally sees various images either from the past or fantasises about the future etc which is very distracting. Where am I meant to place this eye? I don't know how to just not see anything.   I can place my attention on the sensations of my abdomen rising and falling but that is a felt sense not a visual sense. I have not come across any instruction about this.   Do I place the visual sense on the abdomen? Or do I visualise an object or Buddha etc?  

user10100: For ānāpanassati-meditation: don't care the others, even temperature at nose tip. Just focus only breath at nose tip. Even the others come to your senses or your mind, ignore them all. Just focus on only this:


"When he breathing in long, he contemplates 'I breathing in long';
  Or when he breathing out long, he contemplates 'I breathing out
  long'.
When he breathing in short, he contemplates 'I breathing in short';
  Or when he breathing out short, he contemplates 'I breathing out
  short'.
He trains himself 'I am breathing in and sensitively contemplating
  the entire breath in'. Or he trains himself 'I am breathing out and
  sensitively contemplating the entire breath out'.
He trains himself 'I am breathing gentle breath in'. Or he trains
  himself 'I am breathing gentle breath in'.


http://tipitaka.wikia.com/wiki/Satipatthana_Sutta#A._Body
Nimitta always appears to every practitioner, however don't care of nimitta. Just keep focus on breath.
Target of concentration meditation is diverting the attention from unwholesome consciousness's object to wholesome consciousness's object, by ignore the other objects and focus just one.

user9861: I have practiced mindfulness meditation for 50 years. I have even written a book on the practice. The purpose of focusing on the breath is to achieve an objective state of mind so that the deeper mind gets a chance to form important and personal insights.

user43: As for visual awareness, you don't place it anywhere. The way I was instructed, we don't close eyes, we relax them (="soft eyes") and let them wander. If we get sleepy, then we should actively re-engage visual awareness with the room around us, but normally we let the eyes wander and disengage. Most of the attention should be on the breathing - not necessarily abdomen, rather on all muscles involved with breathing, from chest to solar plexus to lowest part of abdomen. The point is to watch the blockages in breathing until you become very familiar with detailed sensations of breathing so much that you start "seeing through breathing". Again, this is how I was instructed, every school is different. When you really concentrate on watching your breathing, the visual images do not appear - but it is absolutely normal and typical for meditators of all experience levels to be attacked by them at random points - I see it as an inevitable sideeffect of going deeper into subconscious, one of those things that are so common that at some point one stops getting frustrated with them and accepts them as part of the deal.
I personally do not recommend visualizing Buddhas or any other objects. I never had success with that type of meditation, so no positive experience. 

user151: Seeing consciousness is seeing consciousness. The content of what you see, think, feel, desire, isn't very important to mindfulness insight practice. What's important is what arises in your personal experiential  world so there is no outside seeing, it's all in your mind.
If you thought "hey that image is in my mind" or "hey, this image is coming from the outside physical world" those would be thoughts, not sights. The sight outside or inside is just a  sight. A sight is just what it is "a pattern of colors" and the "seeming like it's coming from outside your mind" is the experience called "seeming". Two different things, see? We are after precise truth of whatever aspect of experience we are focusing on as it arises and that always happens in the present moment. 
We see these experiences as they are, so words never can really capture what we are referring to, the raw stuff of our experience is what we are referring to when we say "it is what it is". -Metta :)

user4900: What you see, in this case, are visual thoughts- they're the same as verbal thoughts. They arise due to untraceable prior causes that are outside of your control, and they can't really be stopped. Mental and verbal thoughts are both "sankhara", conditioned formations. We are all VERY strongly conditioned in our lives to grasp on to these formations, to "believe" them, and turn them in to ideas and visions and further thoughts. 
When you focus on your breath (or any other meditation object), you're focusing on something real- something you "feel", like you said- but, unlike thoughts and visions, it's something that doesn't feed more grasping. 
Each time your attention goes to your object, you slowly loosen the grip that these conditioned formations have on your attention.
So there's no need to place the attention of the "inner eye" anywhere. Acknowledge and accept that these visual images arise, then put them aside. 
Later on, you'll start to see how visual and verbal thoughts are both the product of the same movements of the mind. These movements mean nothing in themselves- they're just disturbances, like swirls of milk in a stirred-up cup of coffee- but our storehouse of memories and perceptions fill those swirls with powerful symbolism and apparent meaning.

10950: <p>Meditation instructions generally reiterate focusing ones attention on the sensations of breath but attention can mean several things. It can mean placing attention on what you feel but what about what you see?  What I notice a lot is, what I can only describe as my "inner eye", wants to see or visualise something so it generally sees various images either from the past or fantasises about the future etc which is very distracting. Where am I meant to place this eye? I don't know how to just not see anything.   I can place my attention on the sensations of my abdomen rising and falling but that is a felt sense not a visual sense. I have not come across any instruction about this.   Do I place the visual sense on the abdomen? Or do I visualise an object or Buddha etc?  </p>
 10100: <p>For ānāpanassati-meditation: don't care the others, even temperature at nose tip. Just focus only breath at nose tip. Even the others come to your senses or your mind, ignore them all. Just focus on only this:</p>

<blockquote>
  <ol>
  <li>"When he breathing in long, he contemplates 'I breathing in long';
  Or when he breathing out long, he contemplates 'I breathing out
  long'.</li>
  <li>When he breathing in short, he contemplates 'I breathing in short';
  Or when he breathing out short, he contemplates 'I breathing out
  short'.</li>
  <li>He trains himself 'I am breathing in and sensitively contemplating
  the entire breath in'. Or he trains himself 'I am breathing out and
  sensitively contemplating the entire breath out'.</li>
  <li>He trains himself 'I am breathing gentle breath in'. Or he trains
  himself 'I am breathing gentle breath in'.</li>
  </ol>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://tipitaka.wikia.com/wiki/Satipatthana_Sutta#A._Body" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://tipitaka.wikia.com/wiki/Satipatthana_Sutta#A._Body</a></p>

<p><strong>Nimitta always appears to every practitioner, however don't care of nimitta. Just keep focus on breath.</strong></p>

<p>Target of concentration meditation is diverting the attention from unwholesome consciousness's object to wholesome consciousness's object, by ignore the other objects and focus just one.</p>
 9861: <p>I have practiced mindfulness meditation for 50 years. I have even written a book on the practice. The purpose of focusing on the breath is to achieve an objective state of mind so that the deeper mind gets a chance to form important and personal insights.</p>
 43: <p>As for visual awareness, you don't place it anywhere. The way I was instructed, we don't close eyes, we relax them (="soft eyes") and let them wander. If we get sleepy, then we should actively re-engage visual awareness with the room around us, but normally we let the eyes wander and disengage. Most of the attention should be on the breathing - not necessarily abdomen, rather on all muscles involved with breathing, from chest to solar plexus to lowest part of abdomen. The point is to watch the blockages in breathing until you become very familiar with detailed sensations of breathing so much that you start "seeing through breathing". Again, this is how I was instructed, every school is different. When you really concentrate on watching your breathing, the visual images do not appear - but it is absolutely normal and typical for meditators of all experience levels to be attacked by them at random points - I see it as an inevitable sideeffect of going deeper into subconscious, one of those things that are so common that at some point one stops getting frustrated with them and accepts them as part of the deal.</p>

<p>I personally do not recommend visualizing Buddhas or any other objects. I never had success with that type of meditation, so no positive experience. </p>
 151: <p>Seeing consciousness is seeing consciousness. The content of what you see, think, feel, desire, isn't very important to mindfulness insight practice. What's important is what arises in your personal experiential  world so there is no outside seeing, it's all in your mind.</p>

<p>If you thought "hey that image is in my mind" or "hey, this image is coming from the outside physical world" those would be thoughts, not sights. The sight outside or inside is just a  sight. A sight is just what it is "a pattern of colors" and the "seeming like it's coming from outside your mind" is the experience called "seeming". Two different things, see? We are after precise truth of whatever aspect of experience we are focusing on as it arises and that always happens in the present moment. </p>

<p>We see these experiences as they are, so words never can really capture what we are referring to, the raw stuff of our experience is what we are referring to when we say "it is what it is". -Metta :)</p>
 4900: <p>What you see, in this case, are visual thoughts- they're the same as verbal thoughts. They arise due to untraceable prior causes that are outside of your control, and they can't really be stopped. Mental and verbal thoughts are both "sankhara", conditioned formations. We are all VERY strongly conditioned in our lives to grasp on to these formations, to "believe" them, and turn them in to ideas and visions and further thoughts. </p>

<p>When you focus on your breath (or any other meditation object), you're focusing on something real- something you "feel", like you said- but, unlike thoughts and visions, it's something that doesn't feed more grasping. </p>

<p>Each time your attention goes to your object, you slowly loosen the grip that these conditioned formations have on your attention.</p>

<p>So there's no need to place the attention of the "inner eye" anywhere. Acknowledge and accept that these visual images arise, then put them aside. </p>

<p>Later on, you'll start to see how visual and verbal thoughts are both the product of the same movements of the mind. These movements mean nothing in themselves- they're just disturbances, like swirls of milk in a stirred-up cup of coffee- but our storehouse of memories and perceptions fill those swirls with powerful symbolism and apparent meaning.</p>
