Namaste. So far, we have seen how the monk approaches emptiness by a process of abstraction. First he looked at the wilderness, and of course the wilderness has a lot of detail in it. But then he abstracted the wilderness into the earth element, which of course comprises most of the details, the information in the perception of the wilderness: you have the earth, the rocks, the trees, and so many other things. So he took all those earthy things and abstracted them into one perception, the perception of earth. That got rid of the idea of a village, the idea of the palace, the idea of an assembly of monks, and even the idea of the wilderness surrounding them. So now what happens? What’s the next step?

“Further, Ānanda, the monk—not attending to the perception of wilderness, not attending to the perception of earth—attends to the singleness based on the perception of the dimension of the infinity of space. His mind takes pleasure, finds satisfaction, settles, & indulges in its perception of the dimension of the infinity of space.”—Cūḷa Suññatā Sutta

What does this mean? See, you have to think about these things. The Buddha is not going to give you your realizations and insights on a silver platter; you have to do some work, you have to analyze it, you have to cross-question it. We quoted that Sutta before, that the monks who are intelligent cross-question the Suttas, they discuss among themselves. This is why I’m trying to get you all to make intelligent comments, and cross-question the idea in the Suttas—don’t be lazy, look up the terms! Try to figure out what it means.