When you are tired or confused

Regard meditation as recognizing the way things are. To start a meditation is always to recognize where you are right here and now, so that, if your mind is scrambled at the end of the day, then just recognize scrambling. Acknowledge the feeling and the aversion to it – the wanting it to be otherwise. This is the right way of meditating. If after a hectic day, you try and stop all your mental reactions when you go home, it will lead to failure, and then you will feel that you cannot meditate. So instead, you have to start using the situation as it is. You have to learn to objectify the feeling of being scrambled or the idea that you can’t meditate. You  have to just recognize that these feelings and ideas are objects of your mind and that you are a witness to them. If you feel a mess and confused, then practice fully accepting that.

Ajahn Sumedho, The Mind and the Way

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