15 November 2015

Contemplation: The ocean of impediment

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

The ocean of impediment of all karmas
Is produced from one's false imagination.
Should one wish to repent it
Let him sit upright and meditate on the true aspect [of reality].
All sins are just as frost and dew,
So wisdom's sun can disperse them.
Therefore with entire devotion
Let him repent of his six sense organs.

The Sutra of Meditation on the Bodhisattva Universal Virtue (translated by Kojiro Miyasaka with revisions by Pier P. Del Campana), The Threefold Lotus Sutra, pp 365-6.

06 November 2015

Contemplation: The Great Vow of Universal Salvation

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

This is to take a vow that one will liberate all sentient beings, down to the last one, no matter how long it may take to cause them to attain the perfect nirvana, for one will be conforming oneself to the essential nature of Reality, which is characterized by the absence of discontinuity. The essential nature of Reality is all-embracing and pervades all sentient beings; it is everywhere the same and one without duality; it does not distinguish this from that, because it is, in the final analysis, in the state of quiescence.

The Awakening of Faith (trans. Hakeda), reprint edition p.82.