Today’s mostly sunny morning marks another New Moon…and another new beginning on 100 Days.

Billing itself as a “place to meditate,” 100 Days is a blog with no posts, only comments. It’s a site where a dozen-some meditators from various traditions make a shared commitment to dedicate 100 days (long enough, we hope, to instill a habit) to meditation practice. Although you don’t have to wait until Day 1 to join the 100 Days community, today’s Day 1 is the perfect time to begin: new moon, new day, new resolve.

One of my favorite posts on my still-on-hiatus practice blog is the one where I quote a line I learned from a Zen-practicing Christian monk: “Now I begin, Lord, now I begin.” As I remarked in that post, this attitude of “now I begin” offers a welcome-mat to beginners as well as a note of “all’s forgiven” to folks who have fallen off the practice wagon:

    Yesterday’s successes and failures are irrelevant: Now I begin, regardless of the past. In Zen, we have a saying: “Fall down six times, get up seven.” This means it doesn’t matter how many times you fail or fall; all that matters is that you always get up. Regardless of what you did or didn’t do yesterday, today is a fresh start: a new moment, a clean page. Now I begin and begin and begin again: moment by moment, now and again, tomorrow and forever more.

Have you ever wanted to try meditation, or have you ever tried to start meditation and then given up? That past experience or lack thereof is no hindrance to Beginning Again, today. If you don’t know how to meditate but are curious to learn, read this brief intro; if you’re ready to begin Day 1 of the rest of your meditation life, click over to 100 Days and join the crowd. You’d be surprised at how many practitioners, long-time and newbie alike, are Beginning Again with you.