Awareness is able to hold everything that passes through the mind – thoughts, emotions, sensations – in its kind, non-judging space. It holds things lightly, without becoming identified with them. This “flowing” quality of awareness allows us move with the arising and falling away of conditions, without becoming fixed in any of their forms.
A person fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain’s foundation. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. The clouds part and the mountains appear. The moon sets and the water is cool. Each bit of autumn contains vast interpenetration without bounds.
Hongzhi, 12th Century Zen writer
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. 
Meditation is not just a simple technique for stabilizing the mind; it is also the discovery of how to engage fully, even while sitting still. In the modern culture of speed we seem to not do anything fully. We are half watching television and half using the computer; we are driving while talking on the phone; we have a hard time having even one conversation; when we sit down to eat we are reading a newspaper and watching television and even when we are watching television we are flipping through the channels. This quality of life gives us a superficial feeling: we never experience anything fully. We engage in these activities in order to live a full life, but being speedy and distracted, we have never discovered what full means
When emotional distress arises uninvited, we let the story line go and abide with the energy of that moment. This is a felt experience, not a verbal commentary on what is happening. We can feel the energy in our bodies. If we can stay with it, neither acting it out nor repressing it, it wakes us up. Not abiding with our energy is a predictable human habit. Acting out and repressing are tactics we use to get away from our emotional pain. For instance most of us when we’re angry scream or act it out. We alternate expressions of rage with feeling ashamed of ourselves and wallowing in it. We become so stuck in repetitive behavior that we become experts at getting all worked up. In this way we continue to strengthen our conflicting emotions.
