The Beginners Guide to Insight Meditation

Arinna Weisman and Jean Smith combine clear explanations of the Buddha's teachings on freedom and happiness with their personal stories highlighting some of the challenges and insights of practice. The Beginner's Guide to Insight Meditation offers advice about going on retreat and help in choosing a teacher and a community to practice with. This is an enormously practical book that covers every aspect of the teachings a beginner needs to get started.

Arinna Weisman has studied insight meditation since 1979 and has been teaching since 1989. Her root teacher is Ruth Denison who was empowered by the great teacher U Bha Khin. She is the founding teacher of Insight Meditation Center of the Pioneer Valley. Her dharma practice and teaching have been infused with her political and environmental activism. She was the first out queer teacher with Eric Kolvig to lead insight meditation retreats for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Gender Queer community. She also leads 'Uncovering the Heart Retreats' integrating the practice of awareness of the social dynamics of inequity with the dharma practice of liberation.

Jean Smith is the author/editor of numerous successful books on Buddhism, including 365 Zen, A Beginner's Guide to Insight Meditation, and Breath Sweeps Mind. A longtime associate of the Insight Meditation Society, she is the head of the executive board of the Mountain Retreat Center, in Taos, New Mexico, where she lives.