..续本文上一页ver you find them. The effects of this compassion extend not only to yourself, but to others as well. When you don”t weigh yourself down with stress, you”re less likely to be a burden to others; you”re also in a better position to help shoulder their burdens when need be. In this way, the principles of integrity and compassion underlie even the most subtle expressions of the wisdom leading to release. This process of developing emptiness of disturbance is not necessarily smooth and straightforward. It keeps requiring the strength of will needed to give up any attachment. This is because an essential step in getting to know the meditative perception as an action is learning to settle into it, to indulge in it—in other words, to enjoy it thoroughly, even to the point of attachment. This is one of the roles of tranquility in meditation. If you don”t learn to enjoy the meditation enough to keep at it consistently, you won”t grow familiar with it. If you aren”t familiar with it, insight into its consequences won”t arise. However, unless you”ve already had practice using the Rahula instructions to overcome grosser attachments, then even if you gain insight into the disturbances caused by your attachment to concentration, your insight will lack integrity. Because you haven”t had any practice with more blatant attachments, you won”t be able to pry loose your subtle attachments in a reliable way. You first need to develop the moral habit of looking at your actions and their consequences, believing firmly—through experience—in the worth of refraining from harm, however subtle. Only then will you have the skill needed to develop emptiness as an approach to meditation in a pure and undistorted way that will carry you all the way to its intended goal.
Emptiness as an Attribute of the Senses and their Objects Emptiness as an attribute, when used as a departure point for practice, leads to a similar process but by a different route. Whereas emptiness as an approach to meditation focuses on issues of disturbance and stress, emptiness as an attribute focuses on issues of self and not‐self. And whereas emptiness as an approach to meditation starts with tranquility, emptiness as an attribute starts with insight.
The Buddha describes this kind of emptiness in a short discourse (SN XXXV.85). Again, Ananda is his interlocutor, opening the discourse with a question: In what way is the world empty
The Buddha answers that each of the six senses and their objects are empty of one”s self or anything pertaining to one”s self.
The discourse gives no further explanation, but related discourses show that this insight can be put into practice in one of two ways. The first is to reflect on what the Buddha says about “self” and how ideas of self can be understood as forms of mental activity. The second way, which we will discuss in the next section, is to develop the perception of all things being empty of one”s self as a basis for a state of refined concentration. However, as we shall see, both of these tactics ultimately lead back to using the first form of emptiness, as an approach to meditation, to complete the path to awakening.
When talking about “self,” the Buddha refused to say whether it exists or not, but he gave a detailed description of how the mind develops the idea of self as a strategy based on craving. In our desire for happiness, we repeatedly engage in what the Buddha calls “I‐making” and “my‐making” as ways of trying to exercise control over pleasure and pain. Because I‐making and my‐making are actions, they fall under the purview of the Buddha”s instructions to Rahula. Whenever you engage in them, you should check to see whether they lead to affliction; if they do, you should abandon them.
This is a lesson that, on a blatant level, we le…
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