..续本文上一页arn even as children. If you lay claim to a piece of candy belonging to your sister, you”re going to get into a fight. If she”s bigger than you, you”d do better not to claim the candy as yours. Much of our practical education as we grow up lies in discovering where it”s beneficial to create a sense of self around something, and where it”s not.

　　If you learn to approach your I‐making and my‐making in the light of the Rahula instructions, you greatly refine this aspect of your education, as you find yourself forced to be more honest, discerning, and compassionate in seeing where an “I” is a liability, and where it”s a asset. On a blatant level, you discover that while there are many areas where “I” and “mine” lead only to useless conflicts, there are others where they”re beneficial. The sense of “I” that leads you to be generous and principled in your actions is an “I” worth making, worth mastering as a skill. So, too, is the sense of “I” that can assume responsibility for your actions, and can be willing to sacrifice a small pleasure in the present for a greater happiness in the future. This kind of “I,” with practice, leads away from affliction and toward increasing levels of happiness. This is the “I” that will eventually lead you to practice meditation, for you see the long‐term benefits that come from training your powers of mindfulness, concentration, and discernment.

　　However, as meditation refines your sensitivity, you begin to notice the subtle levels of affliction and disturbance that I‐making and my‐making can create in the mind. They can get you attached to a state of calm, so that you resent any intrusions on “my” calm. They can get you attached to your insights, so that you develop pride around “my” insights. This can block further progress, for the sense of “I” and “mine” can blind you to the subtle stress on which the calm and insights are based. If you”ve had training in following the Rahula instructions, though, you”ll come to appreciate the advantages of learning to see even the calm and the insights as empty of self or anything pertaining to self. That is the essence of this second type of emptiness. When you remove labels of “I” or “mine” even from your own insights and mental states, how do you see them

　　 Simply as instances of stress arising and passing away—disturbance arising and passing away—with nothing else added or taken away. As you pursue this mode of perception, you”re adopting the first form of emptiness, as an approach to meditation.

　　Emptiness as a State of Concentration

　　The third kind of emptiness taught by the Buddha—as a state of concentration—is essentially another way of using insight into emptiness as an attribute of the senses and their objects as a means to attain release. One discourse (MN 43) describes it as follows: A monk goes to sit in a quiet place and intentionally perceives the six senses and their objects as empty of self or anything pertaining to self. As he pursues this perception, it brings his mind not directly to release, but to the formless jhana of nothingness, which is accompanied by strong equanimity.

　　Another discourse (MN 106) pursues this topic further, noting that the monk relishes the equanimity. If he simply keeps on relishing it, his meditation goes no further than that. But if he learns to see that equanimity as an action—fabricated, willed—he can look for the subtle stress it engenders. If he can observe this stress as it arises and passes away simply on its own terms, neither adding any other perceptions to it nor taking anything away, he”s again adopting emptiness as an approach to his meditation. By dropping the causes of stress wherever he finds them in his concentration, he ultimately reaches the highest form of emptiness, free from all mental fabrication.

　　T…

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