Arinna Weisman

Lotus Insight Sangha: Returning to Our True Refuge, 5-day hybrid retreat at Camp Samish, Bow, Washington, with Arinna Weisman and Ian Challis, March 2025 Guided forgiveness meditation led by Arinna Weisman: "Like loving-kindness, [forgiveness] doesn't insist on total absolution or absolute forgiveness, but is a journey held in our intention to free ourselves of the constrictions and the contraction of living in that small space of self-judgment" This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCEe_hy2aak

Lotus Insight Sangha: Returning to Our True Refuge, 5-day hybrid retreat at Camp Samish, Bow, Washington, with Arinna Weisman and Ian Challis, March 2025 Morning instructions on vedana (feeling tone) by Arinna Weisman, followed by a guided meditation: "Why is noticing feeling so important? This feeling of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral? It actually is the direct link between whether we go on to suffering, or not. And why is that? Because [...] the habitual response when we go to pleasant feeling is for the mind to forget [...] The mind forgets and moves out and says — I want more of this." This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVlK7EqF6Ng

Lotus Insight Sangha: Returning to Our True Refuge, 5-day hybrid retreat at Camp Samish, Bow, Washington, with Arinna Weisman and Ian Challis, March 2025 Dharma talk on enlightenment by Arinna Weisman: "In the present — moment to moment — we begin the healing process of disentangling, of dismembering, of dismantling again and again those energies [that harm], so that they become less and less of a force in our lives. And so, it's said that the simple description of this path is: don't cling to anything, don't hate anything. That is the path. Because when they're not present, the mind is freed, the heart is freed." This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKo_gTB-yGA

Lotus Insight Sangha: Returning to Our True Refuge, 5-day hybrid retreat at Camp Samish, Bow, Washington, with Arinna Weisman and Ian Challis, March 2025 Guided lovingkindness (metta) meditation led by Arinna Weisman: "Lovingkindness — or metta — is our heart's wish to find itself in friendship. It is our heart calling us back into a connection of friendship and caring, or kindness" This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4vi0PptCPE

Lotus Insight Sangha: Returning to Our True Refuge, 5-day hybrid retreat at Camp Samish, Bow, Washington, with Arinna Weisman and Ian Challis, March 2025 Morning instructions on reclaiming our beauty and love, and resisting through peace, given by Arinna Weisman. Instructions followed by short guided meditation: "We are in this retreat to reclaim what is beautiful about ourselves — what is liberatory [...] We're growing through this practice into the capacity to be resilient, and to feel our beauty and our vision of what is healing, not just for ourselves, but our communities and for all of life" This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIbzDEjnWaQ

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online): Online Day of Mindfulness with Arinna Weisman - How Do We Care for Ourselves and the Outer World in this Political Climate? Jan 11, 2025 Arinna leads a guided compassion meditation: "A really very important part of compassion practice is making a distinction between allowing for the feeling, and also being able to drop the storyline. If we don't drop the storyline, we can't actually hold the feeling empathically, and with compassion and friendship" This meditation is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlcwfTmx-KE

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online): Online Day of Mindfulness with Arinna Weisman - How Do We Care for Ourselves and the Outer World in this Political Climate? Jan 11, 2025 Arinna leads a guided meditation: "Before we go into the meditation, contemplate maybe a couple of the energies living inside of you right now that you really appreciate — just naming that for yourself and greeting those energies — thank you" This meditation is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWwmrDlU4c0

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online): Online Day of Mindfulness with Arinna Weisman - How Do We Care for Ourselves and the Outer World in this Political Climate? Jan 11, 2025 Arinna opens the daylong retreat with a talk on cultivating the beautiful energies, then leads the refuges and precepts: "And so part of today is acknowledging the beautiful, the beautiful energies that live inside of us that have sustained our life. And then part of the theme of today is also exploring the obstacles to this" This talk is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOoV0kd9Km8

Lotus Insight Sangha: Taking Refuge in Presence and Love (5-day hybrid retreat online and at St. Andrew's House), Apr 7-12, 2023 Arinna gives morning instructions on mind states, The Third Foundation of Mindfulness, on the fifth day of the retreat, followed by a guided meditation of gratitude toward our bodies: "The cultivation of the wholesome in right thinking begins with renouncing — and renouncing whatever doesn't support this embodiment of the possibility of peace, equanimity, and kindness. And we forget. And we get entangled. And then we remember"

Lotus Insight Sangha: Taking Refuge in Presence and Love (5-day hybrid retreat online and at St. Andrew's House), Apr 7-12, 2023 Arinna gives morning instructions on vedana (feeling tone) for the fourth day of the retreat, and closes with a guided meditation: "...and that is a different way of talking about what the Buddha is inviting us to — that it is possible to stay connected to that wish, not to be moved by reaction to the pleasant or the unpleasant, so that we might live in a field of non-harming"

Lotus Insight Sangha: Taking Refuge in Presence and Love (5-day hybrid retreat online and at St. Andrew's House), Apr 7-12, 2023 Arinna gives morning instructions for the third day of the retreat, and closes with a guided meditation: "Turning towards what is difficult and being willing to feel it does become the strength that in a way holds all those beautiful qualities together in this boat"

Lotus Insight Sangha: Taking Refuge in Presence and Love (5-day hybrid retreat online and at St. Andrew's House), Apr 7-12, 2023 Arinna gives morning instructions on mindfulness for the second day of the retreat: "We could say that each of us are here because there has been living inside of us this stream of understanding and of love that knows that we are on a journey to realize, to fully embody our beauty"

Lotus Insight Sangha: Taking Refuge in Presence and Love (5-day hybrid retreat online and at St. Andrew's House), Apr 7-12, 2023 Arinna opens the 5-day retreat with a short talk, then leads the refuges, the precepts, and closes with a guided meditation: "The Buddha's invitation in supporting us to take refuge is in our capacity to actually embody this letting go and surrender to being willing to meet what it is that we find"

Dhamma Dena Meditation Center: Dharma as a Mirror of Our Own Lives and Possibilities - A Residential Retreat with Dina Aish and Arinna Weisman, Mar 10-13, 2023 Arinna leads a guided loving kindess (metta) meditation: "I was asked to offer different type of metta meditation that actually was first communicated to me by the Dzogchen tradition. In your mind, imagine yourself in one of your sacred spots in nature. Whether it's by the water or in mountain — one of those places where the place invites you"

Dhamma Dena Meditation Center: Dharma as a Mirror of Our Own Lives and Possibilities - A Residential Retreat with Dina Aish and Arinna Weisman, Mar 10-13, 2023 Arinna leads a guided loving kindess (metta) meditation: "The condition for loving kindness to grow is seeing the goodness in ourselves and others. Not to say there aren't challenges, but for this practice, turning towards our goodness" This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8ZJ0T7Rdyo

Dhamma Dena Meditation Center: Dharma as a Mirror of Our Own Lives and Possibilities - A Residential Retreat with Dina Aish and Arinna Weisman, Mar 10-13, 2023 Arinna gives a dharma talk on karma: "Every intention that has an unwholesome energy associated with it will bear the fruit of that unwholesome energy [...] And any intention to be generous will sow the seed of generosity. And because of that law, every wholesome, internal energy that we enact and feed, every wholesome energy will build the movement and power of our transformation" This dharma talk is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsOx4aWPo6k

Dhamma Dena Meditation Center: Sangha - Reclaiming Connection, Reclaiming Community with Arinna Weisman, Ian Challis, and Fresh "Lev" White, Feb 17 - 20, 2023 Arinna gives a dharma talk on The Four Noble Truths: "What the Buddha saw is that every human being is born with these energies, as well as the beautiful energies [...] And that our work is to develop the capacity to discern what's happening, and whether what's happening in our minds, in our speech, in our behavior, in our thoughts, are supporting the opening, or supporting the obstruction"

Dhamma Dena Meditation Center: Sangha - Reclaiming Connection, Reclaiming Community with Arinna Weisman, Ian Challis, and Fresh "Lev" White, Feb 17 - 20, 2023 Arinna leads a guided loving kindness (metta) meditation: "The Buddha said if we were to search the whole wide world, we would find no one more deserving of love than ourselves. No matter what we have felt or thought or said or done. We are always deserving of this love"

Dhamma Dena Meditation Center: Sangha - Reclaiming Connection, Reclaiming Community with Arinna Weisman, Ian Challis, and Fresh "Lev" White, Feb 17 - 20, 2023 Arinna gives morning instructions on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness from the Satipatthana Sutta, then leads a guided meditation: "The foundational teachings of liberation are held in a sutta and teachings called the Satipatthana, the four foundations of mindfulness, and in this description are the practices that create the conditions for the ending of suffering in our lives" Note: The recording cuts short and is missing the conclusion of the guided meditation

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online) - Wildflowers of the Heart: The Paramis, January 27- 28, 2023 Arinna leads a guided forgiveness meditation: "Forgiveness is this beautiful energy and quality of the heart that allows for relinquishment and a letting go, frees us from judgment and shame and blame, invites us again onto the path from being lost" This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHLRQUf7yX0

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online) - Wildflowers of the Heart: The Paramis, January 27- 28, 2023 Arinna gives a dharma talk on renunciation: "There's something quite honourable about each of us in our struggle because it is the struggle that becomes the conditions for awakening" This dharma talk is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ9DSuiFR5o

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online) - Wildflowers of the Heart: The Paramis, January 27- 28, 2023 Arinna leads a guided meditation: "Whatever we find in this moment becomes the invitation to call in our presence, our kindness, our effort, our compassion, our discernment"

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online) - Wildflowers of the Heart: The Paramis, January 27- 28, 2023 Arinna leads a guided loving kindness (metta) meditation: "We call on the intuition that knows we are always deserving of love, especially when we feel imperfect in our responses to ourself, or to life. It's easy to use the teachings as a way to criticize ourselves or compare ourselves or judge ourselves, and the antidote to this is the practice of metta" This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab7imbDrdSs

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online) - Wildflowers of the Heart: The Paramis, January 27- 28, 2023 Arinna leads a guided meditation: "The Buddha said that the root of our suffering is in the dynamic of wanting, not wanting, or confusion. And believing that whatever we are wanting — even in our meditation practice — is the right thing to want. But, if the dynamic or the experience of the meditation is being driven by wanting or not wanting, then that isn't freedom"

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online) - Wildflowers of the Heart: The Paramis, January 27- 28, 2023 Arinna gives an introduction to practice for new meditators and then leads a guided meditation: "In our own words, how would we like to meet ourselves? Not just as this person in this moment that might feel solid and a little separate, but as a wild and beautiful expression of nature, and of community" This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD7zdkcrjyA

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online) - Wildflowers of the Heart: The Paramis, January 27- 28, 2023 Arinna leads the refuges: "So maybe for today, it's just the perfect amount of time to come together and connect with each other, and hear each other, and reflect back to each other what is lovely about ourselves. And that is one of the most important refuges that the Buddha talked about" This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkkhyWbMrUw

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online) - Wildflowers of the Heart: The Paramis, January 27- 28, 2023 Arinna gives a dharma talk on patience: "And we could say then how deep patience is rooted in the heart's calling for healing and peace and awakening, because without patience, we're caught in the habitual stream of reactivity — and we know that anytime we are, the consequence of that is always harming" This dharma talk is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEYwVDUGnKU

Lotus Insight Sangha (Online) - Wildflowers of the Heart: The Paramis, January 27- 28, 2023 Arinna opens the two-day retreat with a guided meditation: "We don't have to go anywhere else really, but just to say this hello — 'I’m here'. Acknowledging the different sensations that are being communicated, another form of greeting. Awareness greets the sensations of the life of the body"

New Year's Retreat in Colfax: Entering Our Lives with Awareness and Loving Kindness, with Arinna Weisman and Melissa Coats, Dec 27, 2022 - Jan 1, 2023 Arinna gives a dharma talk on equanimity and learning to hold what we've been given to heal: "Sometimes when it's one wounding on top of another on top of another, that it feels like — for some of us at least — the fabric is torn enough that it isn't ever fully sewn back together. But, how that torn fabric is held has totally changed. Because often I feel beautiful, even with the torn fabric. And that's where equanimity is — is in that grace of holding what is torn" This dharma talk is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfs9iD-KaZg

New Year's Retreat in Colfax: Entering Our Lives with Awareness and Loving Kindness, with Arinna Weisman and Melissa Coats, Dec 27, 2022 - Jan 1, 2023 Arinna gives morning instructions, followed by a brief guided meditation: "Here's my question to us: how can we honor ourselves by offering ourselves a vision, without that vision triggering our shame? How can we? Because I know when we think about liberating ourselves from capitalism, changing the structures of homophobia, racism, classism, ableism, xenophobia — just to name a few — there's no shame in that vision of co-creating cultures and structures that are deeply respectful of our beautiful selves" This recording is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsmqSFChn8U

New Year's Retreat in Colfax: Entering Our Lives with Awareness and Loving Kindness, with Arinna Weisman and Melissa Coats, Dec 27, 2022 - Jan 1, 2023 Arinna leads a guided forgiveness meditation: "Forgiveness is one of the paths for embodying this invitation. It's about unburdening the obstacles to this love, to this homecoming that we are being called to" This meditation is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E6poYxZusE

New Year's Retreat in Colfax: Entering Our Lives with Awareness and Loving Kindness, with Arinna Weisman and Melissa Coats, Dec 27, 2022 - Jan 1, 2023 Arinna leads a guided appreciative joy meditation: "There is another invitation to practice appreciative joy which comes from recollecting your own virtues — recollecting the beautiful qualities that you have living inside of you. And this is the practice that I'm going to offer" This meditation is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug3QpHcBrgw

New Year's Retreat in Colfax: Entering Our Lives with Awareness and Loving Kindness, with Arinna Weisman and Melissa Coats, Dec 27, 2022 - Jan 1, 2023 Arinna gives a dharma talk on mindfulness: "Mindfulness is the great leader in the energies of our freedom and our liberation" This dharma talk is also available as a video on Arinna's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3xjltTTjj0

Spirit Rock Meditation Center: Reclaiming our Path of Freedom Through Love, with Arinna Weisman, Noliwe Alexander, Jozen Tamori Gibson and Ian Challis Arinna gives a dharma talk on how to take refuge in the beautiful qualities of mind and to name the tree of ignorance and its branches as invitations for recognition and abandonment. Recording provided by Dharma Seed: https://www.dharmaseed.org/talks/73040/

Disentangling from Doubt: A Four Session Online Class with Arinna Weisman and Katy Wiss, July 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th, 2022 (day 4 of 4) Arinna closes out the retreat with an ad-lib dharma talk on the power of intention and our interdependence on each other: "Intentions always bring consequences — and when the intentions are guided by a commitment to freedom and liberation, they will eventually bear consequences, and bear fruit"

Disentangling from Doubt: A Four Session Online Class with Arinna Weisman and Katy Wiss, July 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th, 2022 (day 3 of 4) Arinna leads a guided meditation: "Mindfulness is about building a relationship and knowing 'I'm here'. That here-ness is the beginning of the relationship. I'm here. I'm here with my experience"

Disentangling from Doubt: A Four Session Online Class with Arinna Weisman and Katy Wiss, July 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th, 2022 (day 2 of 4) Arinna leads a guided meditation: "Living inside us is this quality of caring and of presence. And they kind of fuse together — this energy we can call into being that is one of our greatest companions, that is a friend and a witness"

Disentangling from Doubt: A Four Session Online Class with Arinna Weisman and Katy Wiss, July 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th, 2022 (day 1 of 4) Arinna opens the first day with a dharma talk on faith: "No matter how often we are lost, there is always this place inside of us that is there alive and enduring"

Spirit Rock Meditation Center (Online) - Growing Equanimity: A Mind That Is Near To All Things, with Arinna Weisman and Alisa Dennis, PhD, June 26th, 2022 Arinna leads a guided meditation: "Is it possible to invite kindness into meeting this moment, this body and heart? May I care for you just as you are, however you are"

Spirit Rock Meditation Center (Online) - Growing Equanimity: A Mind That Is Near To All Things, with Arinna Weisman and Alisa Dennis, PhD, June 26th, 2022 Arinna opens the daylong by leading the refuges: "Over the years of practice, I have felt so inspired by the capacity that each of us have to orient towards what is unknown, but that we intuit is there — this capacity to heal, to open, to be wise, to be loving, to be kind, to be skillful. This capacity to actually end all our suffering"

San Francisco LGBT Sangha's 20th anniversary daylong hybrid event online and at the SF Buddhist Center, June 18th, 2022 Arinna Weisman gives a brief dharama talk on beginning anew, imperfection, and frienship: "Beginning with that: how often we've internalized perfection, how this culture has lifted up and constructed some aspect of ourselves and the need to be perfect. And how when we don't reach those goals — whether it's in our practice, or whether it's in relationship to our mind, or in our relationships, or in our work, or really in anything — we find ourselves failing. How often that experience of failure — or sometimes even failure and shame and inner self-judgment or blame — can stop us from beginning again"

San Francisco LGBT Sangha's 20th anniversary daylong hybrid event online and at the SF Buddhist Center, June 18th, 2022 Arinna Weisman leads a guided meditation: "See if you would like offer an appreciation to the body. How much our body has carried — our hearts, light or heavy, our joy and our grief — all the many, many, many different mind moments"

A Time for Healing: Disentangling from Doubt - Daylong Online Retreat with Arinna Weisman and Katy Wiss, June 4th, 2022 Arinna Weisman gives a dharma talk on doubt and faith: "Faith understands that we are always deserving of the beautiful qualities of the heart and mind — no matter what happens — that we're always deserving of it"

A Time for Healing: Disentangling from Doubt - Daylong Online Retreat with Arinna Weisman and Katy Wiss, June 4th, 2022 Arinna Weisman leads a guided loving kindess (metta) and gratitude meditation towards our bodies: "Whether we're young or old, the body has the capacity to be tired, or to get sick — or whatever it is — and we can offer metta as a lovely invitation to bring balance in that way. And it's also a really lovely energy as the grounds for faith — and cultivating faith is this practice, and challenges doubt"

A Time for Healing: Disentangling from Doubt - Daylong Online Retreat with Arinna Weisman and Katy Wiss, June 4th, 2022 Arinna Weisman and Katy Wiss open the daylong retreat. Katy leads the refuges, then Arinna leads the precepts. Katy and Arinna give an introduction to doubt and faith, and Katy leads a guided meditation. Arinna finishes by leading a guided movement practice.

Online Teaching with Spirit Rock Meditation Center's Rainbow Sangha, June 1, 2022 Arinna offers a guided meditation and gives a dharma talk on gratitude as a practice: "Gratitude is one of the antidotes to those mind states, to that heaviness in the heart. Because it turns to our capacity to not only hold what is difficult, to not only hold what is filled with suffering, at the same time to hold in the breadth of our heart what is also beautiful"

Online Teaching with Spirit Rock Meditation Center's Rainbow Sangha, May 4th, 2022 Arinna offers a guided meditation and gives a dharma talk on turning toward our beautiful qualities to heal: "We have this capacity, which is called our Buddha nature. We have this inside of us. So although it often isn't acknowledged, we have this capacity to turn to whatever is difficult, and to begin a path of healing. That's miraculous to me. It's miraculous that we have this capacity to heal, and that we don't have to be any different than we are"

The Present Moment and the Doorway to Clarity, Love and Joy: Weekend Online Meditation Retreat - Tucson Community Meditation Center, April 29th - 30th, 2022 Arinna closes the retreat with a guided forgiveness meditation: "The Buddha said that the practice of forgiveness was the gateway to love — because it clears the heart of judgment, shame and blame"

The Present Moment and the Doorway to Clarity, Love and Joy: Weekend Online Meditation Retreat - Tucson Community Meditation Center, April 29th - 30th, 2022 Arinna gives a dharma talk on allowing and opening to suffering, and the role of forgiveness in this process: "When the Buddha said in the first noble truth, 'there is suffering,' I so deeply appreciated that because it names a reality that often isn't named culturally. And often we aren't allowed or supported to grieve that, to say this is part of being a human being […] And so we live with this grief and internalize it as though something's wrong with us, judge ourselves, blame ourselves, because we think we should be better"

The Present Moment and the Doorway to Clarity, Love and Joy: Weekend Online Meditation Retreat - Tucson Community Meditation Center, April 29th - 30th, 2022 Arinna leads a guided loving kindness (metta) meditation: "Traditionally we start [metta meditation] with ourselves, but I wanted to offer starting with a person, an animal, a tree, a place — to begin with not ourselves but someone else"