Buddhist-Meditation-Systematic-and-Practical

3. The Four Mindfulnesses as a Totality
What does this mean? To practice in this way, one
combines these four into one meditation. In the
Hinayana, a meditator who is very skilled in samatha
would be able to meditate upon the smallest atom. Such
is not our meaning here. Rather than be sidetracked by a
mindful enquiry into these subtle particles, we should
take them as sunyata and so rid ourselves of the five
sharp drivers.
Taken in this aspect, the meditation on impurity is not
only of the flesh, but concerns view as well. This is to
be reduced by sunyata meditation. One is rid of the first
sharp driver (the view of "my" body) thereby.
Why should we meditate on the sunyata of feeling? All
feelings are usually grasped with the extreme view of
them as pleasurable, painful, or neither. But really they
are all sunyata. With this realization, the second sharp
driver, the one-sided view, is destroyed.
Thirdly, regarding the mind as impermanent, what does
this mean? Impermanence implies sunyata. When one
knows the sunyata here, then the third sharp driver
relating to cause and effect is swept away. Without
meditating thus, the mind will always be looking for a
source or a cause.
In the fourth meditation (on the dharmas) all the
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