Thank you for your comments and lengthy set of quotations which corroborate
my contention that nimitta is a mental product not a sense object. I agree
with you that these terms must often be seen in the light of what we would
call meditation. Even when this is not made explicit in the Buddha's
dialogues, it is often the underlying assumption. If one overlooks this,
then one can go astray both in one's understanding of teh text and also in
one's meditational practice.