Contemplation: To the Magic Citadel, Directly

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

Contemplating the body as empty, observing mind as empty, seeing no impermanence and no impurity in emptiness--such items of the path lead directly to the magic citadel.

When contemplating the body as impermanent, you see impermanence is identical to emptiness. Contemplating the reality nature of the body, you see it is not permanent, not impermanent, not empty, not nonempty. Contemplating the mind is also like this. Such items of the path lead indirectly to the abode of treasure.

Contemplating the real nature of the body as neither pure nor impure, yet aware of both purity and impurity, and so on, contemplating the real nature of the mind as neither permanent nor impermanent, yet aware of both permanence and impermanence, such items of the path lead directly to the abode of treasure.

Chih-i, Stopping and Seeing, p. 32

Contemplation: To the Magic Citadel, Indirectly

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

Just observe the momentary arising of mind in the relationship of the sense faculties and sense data; the arising of mind is conditional, and the mind of conditional terminology is the basis of delusion and understanding. This means the four truths have infinite characteristics; there is nothing else in the triple world but the making of one mind, and the mind is like a painter, making various forms. The mind constructs the six states of existence and discriminates and compares infinitely various differences, such as, for example, that such and such views and cravings are characteristic of light or heavy causes of suffering in the world or characteristic of light or heavy causes of suffering beyond the world, or that such and such birth and death is characteristic of light or heavy suffering of individual birth and death, or characteristic of light or heavy birth and death beyond the world. By overturning this mind, one produces understanding, like a painter washing off colors and applying whitewash.

That means contemplating the body as impure and mind as inconstant. These items of the path lead indirectly to the magic citadel.

Chih-i, Stopping and Seeing, p. 31-32

Contemplation: No Place to Escape

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

Now, the mind does not arise alone but in relation to objects. The intellective faculty is the cause, the data of phenomena is the condition, and the mind aroused is that which is produced. This faculty and data, subject and object, become, change, and pass away, suddenly arising, suddenly vanishing, again and again being born and passing away anew, not abiding moment to moment, like flashes of lightning, swift as rapids.

The foam of form, the bubbles of sensation, the flames of perception, the boundaries of conditioned states, the illusions of consciousness, all the objective counterparts of awareness, including land, fields, house, family, property--all are gone in an instant. Momentarily there, suddenly they are gone. The whole world is impermanent; the whole world is just suffering.

When the physical elements come together, there is no place to escape. One should only focus the mind on discipline, concentration, and wisdom, to vertically break up delusion and horizontally cut through the sea of death, crossing over the stream of existence. Scripture says, "In the past, I did not see the four truths, just like you; that is why I went around in circles for a long time." The "burning house" is like this; how can you be addicted to indulgence and amusement?

Chih-i, Stopping and Seeing, pp. 28-29; see also, Lotus Sutra chapter 3.

Contemplation: My Good Friend

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

If you have heard the Dharma and do not forget it
But regard and revere it with great joy,
You are my good friend. For this reason,
You should awaken aspiration for Enlightenment.

Even if the whole world is on fire,
Be sure to pass through it to hear the Dharma;
Then you will surely enter the Path of the Buddha
And everywhere deliver beings from the river of birth-and-death.

Buddha Shakyamuni, in the Sutra on the Buddha of Infinite Life (Larger Pure Land Sutra), published in Three Pure Land Sutras, p. 275

Contemplation: Seeing Buddha

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

If, seeing Buddha, one knows there is no Buddha in Buddha, if, seeing Buddha's marks and embellishments, one knows marks and embellishments are not marks and embellishments, and knows that Buddha and the marks are like space, and in space there is no Buddha, much less any marks and embellishments, then, seeing Buddha is not Buddha, one sees Buddha, and seeing the marks are not marks, one sees the marks, and aspires to equal Buddha and liberate countless sentient beings, this is arousing the aspiration for enlightenment by seeing marks and embellishments of the higher adaptive embodiment of Buddha, seeking above and teaching below.

Chih-i, Stopping and Seeing, p. 17