Contemplation: Practice and Precepts

After reviewing the guidelines for practice, take up this teaching as your object of contemplation:

Thus for every thing that lives,
As far as are the limits of the sky,
May I provide their livelihood and nourishment
Until they pass beyond the bonds of suffering.

Just as all the buddhas of the past
Embraced the awakened attitude of mind,
And in the precepts of the bodhisattvas
Step by step abode and trained,

Just so, and for the benefit of beings,
I will also have this attitude of mind,
And in those precepts, step by step,
I will abide and train myself.

Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva (Padmakara Translation), p. 52)