[teewHettive]

Why you think the suttas do not really contain meditation techniques?

If we were to take it as a meditation technique rather than general guiding principles upon meditation techniques can be based for a start we'd need a shady tree in the wilderness. Of course modern meditation teachers of techniques are pragmatic about this.

Then there is no indication how one knows the breath, is it by feeling it? imagining it? noting it? labelling it? just figuring well I'm not dead so must be breathing? how do you calm bodily fabrication? how do you be sensitive to rapture?

If you feel it do you do so at the nostrils or abdomen or the whole body? when sensitive to the entire body does that mean sensitive the the breath in the body or all bodily sensations whethyer or not breath realated?

How long is it supposed to take? Do you just breath once short and once long and go on to the next step?

How do you deal with pain? how do you deal with discursive thought? how long should you sit there?

I know I'm being overly pendantic but I'm just trying to demonstrate how you will have filled in the gaps based on what you've learned from teachers of modern meditation techniques. I don't think a total beginner reading this sutta is going to know exactly what to do wheras I'm sure an experienced meditator going back to the sutta can find confirmation of the principles they have gleaned from learned techniques that have worked for them.