Contemplation: Perfection of Morality

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

Where, indeed, could beings, fishes, and the rest
Be placed, to shield them totally from suffering?
Deciding to refrain from harming them
Is said to be perfection of morality.

The hostile multitudes are vast as space--
What chance is there that all should be subdued?
Let but this angry mind be overthrown
And every foe is then and there destroyed.

To cover all the earth with sheets of hide--
Where could such amounts of skin be found?
But simply wrap some leather round some feet,
And it's as if the whole earth has bee covered!

Santideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, pp. 63-64

Contemplation: Generosity Perfected

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

The true intention to bestow on every being
All possessions--and the fruits of such a gift:
By such, the teachings say, is generosity perfected.
And this, as we may see, is but the mind itself.

Santideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, p. 63

Contemplation: Mindfulness' Rope

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

Those who wish to keep a rule of life
Must guard their minds in perfect self-possession.
Without this guard upon the mind,
No discipline can ever be maintained.

Wandering where it will, the elephant of mind,
Will bring us down to the pains of deepest hell.
No worldly beast, however wild,
Could bring upon us such calamities.

If, with mindfulness' rope,
The elephant of the mind is tethered all around,
Our fears will come to nothing,
Every virtue drop into our hands.

Santideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, p. 62

Contemplation: In My Lifetime

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

In my lifetime, love in every heart;
In my lifetime, peace, peace on earth!

Song overheard at Albuquerque International Sunport, 3 August 2013