Is spiritual practice about emptying the realm or emptying oneself?

What dharmas does the realm of sense objects include? The realm of sense objects is the dust (sense objects); the dust refers to all forms, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles, and dharmas that stand in opposition to my conscious mind, including all dharmas of human affairs and physical phenomena, including one's own and others' bodies of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha). When faculties and dust come into contact, consciousness arises; where there is consciousness, there is discrimination, and thoughts will arise and stir. So then, in cultivation, is it the realm of sense objects that is emptied, or the self that is emptied? The self is emptied first; once the self is emptied, the realm of sense objects is thereby emptied—not that once the realm of sense objects is emptied, the self is emptied.
If the realm of sense objects does not exist, the self does not exist; if the realm of sense objects exists, the self exists. What kind of cultivation is this called? If this too can be called cultivation, then the non-Buddhist practitioners who cultivated the four dhyānas and eight meditative absorptions and emptied the marks of the sense realm, yet retained only the self—have they eradicated the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi)? Who can be emptier than those non-Buddhists? Those who cultivate the realm of sense objects are, in fact, those who are turned by the realm of sense objects; those who are turned by the realm of sense objects are ordinary beings. If the self is emptied, is there still dust? The dust is thereby emptied along with it. If you are not emptied, all realms of sense objects arise; if your mind is emptied, all realms of sense objects dissolve into nothingness.