How can the dust be extinguished?

Having realized the arising, ceasing, mutability, unreality, falsity, and emptiness (śūnyatā) of sense objects, thereafter when the mind encounters sense objects, the mind becomes empty and pure toward them; one's views change, one's knowledge and understanding change, and one becomes endowed with right view. The mind has no sense objects—seeing sense objects yet not as sense objects—one attains the samādhi of sense objects and abides in the samādhi of sense objects. Yet the sense objects do not disappear or cease; the false appearances still remain, but all cognition of them has changed: no longer deluded, no longer inverted, no longer grasping (upādāna).

Sense objects are the appearances that the mind discerns, including material appearances, mental appearances, and appearances that are neither material nor mental. The mind is the sense faculty, and dharmas are the sense objects; the two are like the traces on a mirror. When studying the Dharma, principle is principle, and phenomena are phenomena—forever two separate things. The moment one encounters an actual situation, the principle flees to the back of one's head, and one gets stuck on the phenomenon. Studying the Dharma this way, would one attain liberation only by the year of the donkey?