Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising

When, however, the citta is unrestricted – when there is largeness of heart, and one is dwelling in one of the Four Immeasurables (mettā, compassion, joy, or equanimity) – a similar imprint from the past can often just result, in the present, in an experience that “hardly appears even for a moment”.

Śūnyatā, the magical nature of things, is revealed equally everywhere, in the appearances of heaven and in the appearances of hell.

What appears in any state of more equanimity is an object that seems in itself an easier perception to be less reactive to.

When qualities such as generosity, mettā, and compassion are strong, all perception is coloured. We see beauty everywhere, in other sentient beings, in nature, in the most mundane and ordinary situations and objects.

craving, identification, and avijjā – are ‘builders of the self and the world’. In contrast, mettā, compassion, samādhi, equanimity, and even generosity, build less self and less world. Thus

What do I stifle within myself?

That by means of which there is grasping, and the grasping, as well as the grasper, and that which is grasped, are all peace. Therefore grasping is not found.

it is also possible to expand and open up the personality-view by acknowledging, honouring, and loving the diverse aspects, manifestations, and expressions of the self.

For as much as it is a fabricator of perception, a citta state is also itself an object of perception. Or rather it is a conglomeration of perceptions – those perceived as internal (for example, the perceptions of heat, calmness, agitation, or pleasure in the body and mind), and those perceived as external. In fact, just like a jhāna, any citta sta