Contemplation: Charity

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

Subhuti, in the practice of charity a bodhisattva should be detached.  That is to say, he should practice charity without regard to appearances--without regard to sound, odor, touch, flavor, or any quality.  Subhuti, thus should the bodhisattva practice charity without attachment.

from the Diamond Sutra, chap. 4, trans. A.F. Price and Wong Mou-Lan

Contemplation: Why is this?

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

Buddha said:  Subhuti, all the bodhisattva heroes should discipline their thoughts as follows:  All living creatures of whatever class, born from eggs, from wombs, from moisture, or by transformation, whether with form or without form, whether in a state of thinking or exempt from thought necessity, or wholly beyond all thought realms--all these are caused by me to attain unbounded liberation nirvana.  Yet when vast, uncountable, immeasurable numbers of  beings have thus been liberated, verily no being has been liberated.  Why is this, Subhuti?

from the Diamond Sutra, chap. 3, trans. A.F. Price and Wong Mou-Lan

Contemplation: A Star at Dawn

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

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

(from the Diamond Sutra, chap. 32, trans. A.F. Price and Wong Mou-Lan)

Contemplation: The World and the Way

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

If you follow the present-day world, you will turn your back on the Way; if you would not turn your back on the Way, do not follow the world.

Takuan Soho, The Unfettered Mind (highly recommended reading).

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Contemplation: Take Heed

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

Let me respectfully remind you:
Life and death are of supreme importance.
Each of us should strive to awaken.
Awaken!
Take heed!
Do not squander your life.

"Evening Gatha" as recited at Tendai Buddhist Institute

Contemplation: The Body

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

The body, apt to practice sacred teaching,
Should not be harmed in trivial pursuits.
If this advice is kept, the wishes of all beings
Will swiftly and completely be attained.

Santideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, p. 74

Contemplation: Always Labor for the Benefit of Beings

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

Therefore understand this well
And always labor for the benefit of beings.
The far-seeing masters of compassion
Permit, to this end, that which is proscribed.

Santideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, p. 74