The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

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Like no longer having the confusion or the sense of it's just not right somehow or we

teach about impermanence how nothing is lasting forever. It's always ending.

Things are transient. All experiences are transient. of course they are.

But implicit in these teachings even if it's not explicit is this idea of beginnings.

You see this showing up again and again.

For me, often when I'm giving a guided meditation, even if I'm like sometimes I'll give a guided meditation to myself,

sometimes I even will use a little voice to myself if I'm feeling particularly unsettled.

But I often hear myself saying, either out loud or to myself sometimes,

if you find yourself lost in thought, begin again.

Just simply begin again.

You know, this idea of it doesn't matter how many times

you've been lost in thought of what the mind has been doing, you always just very simply

just come back to the breath. And it doesn't matter how many times we have to do that.

10,000, 10 million, 1,100, whatever.

It also doesn't matter like how long we've been away lost in thought.

Ten seconds, ten minutes, ten hours.

It also holds for our meditation practice like even just coming to the cushion.

Maybe you haven't meditated in years. Maybe it meant in months, weeks, days, whatever it is.

We can always begin again.

And in some ways it's even to be really valued.

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