Contemplation: Cutting Through Appearances

Settle the mind. Review the method for practicing contemplation with care, and with the intention to practice for the benefit of all beings without exception, take the following as your object of contemplation:

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

Endeavor to carry this contemplation through your everyday life, in all that you see or hear or touch.

(from the Diamond Sutra, chap. 32, trans. A.F. Price and Wong Mou-Lan)