Is Practice About Making External Conditions Empty, or Making Oneself Empty?

What dharmas does the realm of sense objects include? The realm of sense objects is the dust (viṣaya); dust refers to all forms, sounds, scents, tastes, tangibles, and dharmas that stand opposite my conscious mind, including all dharmas of human affairs, events, and physical phenomena, including one's own and others' bodies of the five aggregates (pañcaskandha). When faculties and dust come into contact, consciousness arises; where there is consciousness, there is discrimination, and thus thoughts arise and the mind stirs. So in cultivation, is it the realm of sense objects that is to be emptied, or the self? It is the self that is emptied first; once the self is emptied, the realm of sense objects is emptied too—not that once the realm of sense objects is emptied, the self is emptied.
If there is no realm of sense objects, then there is no self; if there is a realm of sense objects, then there is a self. What kind of cultivation is this? If this too counts as cultivation, then consider the non-Buddhists (tīrthikas): through their cultivation they attain the four dhyānas and eight samādhis and empty out the appearances of the realm of sense objects, yet only the self remains—have they thereby eliminated self-view (ātma-dṛṣṭi)? Who could be more empty than they? Those who cultivate the realm of sense objects are, in fact, those who are turned by the realm of sense objects, and those who are turned by the realm of sense objects are ordinary beings (pṛthagjana). Once the self is emptied, is there still dust? The dust is emptied along with it. If you are not empty, all realms of sense objects arise; if your mind is empty, all realms of sense objects dissolve into nothing.