In my current meditation practice, I move through five kinds of concentration, the first of which I call Contact. It involves being very aware that I am breathing, before I move to the second level of concentration, Sustained awareness of my breath. The third level is one of Rapture, followed by Joy and then One-pointedness, which is close to absorption.
The foundation of it all for me is Contact. Before I am aware of and make concentrated contact with my breath, I have already made awareness contact with my body through mindful movements, including stretches on the floor and settling onto my pillow. Making contact with my breath is simply a continuation of the awareness, the attention I give to my body in other ways as I go through exercises and planned movements.
Contact with the ground, with plants and with people is no less an occasion of deep awareness. The contact is more than the basic physicality of the experience. The contact gives me the opportunity to be aware that I am touching or being touched. Even contact with the chair I am sitting in can be more than the simple physicality of feeling the chair. It easily becomes an experience of awareness of a chair that I am contacting.
To some degree, contact with inanimate things like a chair, keyboard or floor is remarkably different from contact with living beings such as persons, plants or pets. However, sometimes it seems that there is a continuum of animation that extends to things considered inanimate. I sometimes know a level of awareness that there is aliveness even in those things typically considered inanimate. To experience that awareness, I may have to realize the fifth level of concentration, One-pointedness. I definitely have to go beyond awareness of the simple physicality of contact by touch.
The awareness that arises through contact is more than a simple sensory experience. However, the contact that generates awareness is typically grounded in some type of sensory experience. I think that, with practice, most sensory experience can be the foundation for deep awareness and joy.