Contemplation: Just This

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

Just this...
...from birth to death

--Zen poetry spraypainted to a rail trestle in Minneapolis

Contemplation: Birth and Death

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

Birth and death,
You have been crushing me.
Now you can no longer touch me.

Tue Trung, quoted by Thich Nhat Hanh, The Sun My Heart, p. 99

Contemplation: Four Inverted Views, 6

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

Virtuous man, what is the sign of life? It is the mind of sentient beings that illuminates purity, in which they are aware of what they have realized. Karmic [consciousness] and wisdom cannot perceive themselves. This is comparable to the root of life. Virtuous man, when the mind is able to illuminate and perceive enlightenment, it is but a defilement, because both perceiver and perceived are not apart from defilement. After ice melts in hot water, there is no ice to be aware of its melting. The perception of the existence of the self enlightening itself is also like this.

The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, p. 51

Contemplation: Four Inverted Views, 5

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

Virtuous man, what is the sign of sentient beings? It is the experience which is beyond self-awakening and it is that which is awakened to in the minds of sentient beings. Virtuous man, if for example a man sans, 'I am a sentient being,' we know that what he speaks of as 'sentient being' refers neither to himself nor to another person [only]. Why is he not referring to his self? Since this self is sentient being, it is not limited to his self. Since this self is sentient being, therefore it is not another person's self. Virtuous man, the experiences and awakenings of sentient beings are all [traces of] the self and the person. In the awakening beyond the traces of the self and person, if one retained the awareness of having realized something, it would be called the sign of sentient beings.

From The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, p. 51