We think of the new year as a fresh start. The old year is done, what will the new year bring? Perhaps we are anxious about difficulties in our own lives or the lives of our communities, however you define that. What will get worse this new year? Perhaps we are hopeful. This year we will do better – at whatever it is we feel we have not done well enough in the past.

Actually, each day, each moment, is a fresh start. Each breath is a fresh start. Then it’s gone and a new one arises. Mu is the sound of that fresh start, that breath. This moment arises out of the whole of existence. Really it is the whole of existence. How can there be such a thing as better or worse.

In this moment the early morning sun casts long shadows. The shadow of the ash tree in my garden intermingles with the actual trees and shrubs in the park across the street. As birds flit through the trees, their shadows flit through the shadow trees as well. Beyond the shadows, the snow sparkles in the sun, reflecting the sun’s light back towards my eye, sitting here in the warmth of my living room.

I remember having the insight as a teenager, while looking at the moon one morning, that there was someone on the other side of the Earth looking at the same moon. That as I watched the sun rise, there was someone else, far away, watching the same sun set. In this moment as I breath out, how many billions of beings, human or otherwise, are also breathing out; breathing in? On how many planets are there beings breathing in; breathing out?  A fresh start wherever you look.