A few months ago I did a meditation retreat in Portland with long-time meditation teacher and New York Times bestselling author Sharon Salzberg. Out of ten pages of lecture notes and three days of sitting and walking meditation practice, there is one quote I held on to, and return to still.

“The important moment is the one in which you come back and begin again. Let go and begin again. It's the most important part of the process, the transformative part.”

So many of us—me included—seem to worry about getting things “right.” In meditation, we worry about the straying mind, about the length of meditation time, whether it's good enough, and so on. We can be so focused on getting right that eyes-closed-sitting-still-looking-like-Buddha moment that we miss the point of why we're sitting in the first place. We show up for ourselves. We show up to pay attention. We show up to forgive ourselves for not showing up. We show up to learn to give compassion to ourselves, the same ground of training for giving compassion to others. Over and over and over.

And, it's the same with daily life. In order to come back, we must be open. In order to begin again, we must let go. In meditation as in life, Salzberg gives us this very simple, loving quote: come back and begin again.