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