Contemplation: What is there to Gain?

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

Wandering beings, thus, resemble dreams
And also the banana tree, if you examine well.
No difference is there, in their own true nature,
Between the states of suffering and beyond all sorrow.

Thus, with things devoid of true existence,
What is there to gain, and what to lose?
Who is there to pay me court and honors,
And who is there to scorn and to revile me?

Pain and pleasure, whence do these arise?
And what is there to give me joy and sorrow?
In this quest and search for perfect truth,
Who is craving, what is there to crave?

Santideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, p. 158