Empty cognizance doesn’t need to be fabricated in any way.

Just don’t
forget it.

There are extremes here on both sides; namely, fabricating experience

to attempt some idea of meditation, and to be lost in thought entirely.

Abandon the extremes. Just notice the empty cognizance of the mind.
It notices it’s own cognizance.

Bodhidharma, Mazu, Dazhu Huihai, Linji and other Tang era teachers,
seeing nature is buddhahood.

m:

The mind essence is unconditioned, empty clarity. The mind is conditioned. A

person who has directly perceived their own mind essence is someone who
has rig pa, knowledge.

The mind essence is not cognizant, however, any more than a mirror is
cognizant of the reflections on its surface.

For example, to use a metaphor Norbu Rinpoche frequently employs for

making people understand clarity, when you look at a vista and swiftly move
your head from one side to the other, all of the impressions on your sense
organ of the eyes (in this example) are part of your clarity, but one has no
awareness or cognizance of any object within that field. If you recognize
something in that field and pick it out, that is mind, not clarity.

"Cognizant" (meaning to know of or be aware of something, ) means that one

must have something to be cognizant of. It's built into the way the word is
used in our language. You never use the verb without "of" being appended to
it.