Last night I went to a dharma talk by Arinna Weisman.

It was a St Marks cathedral on Capitol Hill. I bussed there and sat on the green grass out front with a bunch of pretty, friendly women who were eating and stretching and talking, waiting for the event to start.

We trailed in and found cushions, sitting in a big semi circle around Arinna. She seemed thin and somewhat frail, but her spirit is so strong. We sat in meditation of 45 minutes and then she spoke about change, transformation, social and political justice and dealing with mental afflictions like anger, greed, jealousy and fear.

She grew up in South Africa, her parents knew Nelson Mandela. She told us a lot of stories, some about him, some about other heroic, and ordinary, people trying to bring about non-violent change in the world, perservering in the face of hostility, greed, violence and murder.

She told us about a prisoner(in the US) she had been writing to, who was arrested for selling a bag of pot. He was in prison for 10 years, got out, and tried to make a life for himself, but was broke and desperate and fell for a sting operation, got 25 more years for selling weed, again. She spoke of his despair and pain.

She told us about her teacher, Ruth, who spent many years as primary caretaker for her husband, an alzheimers sufferer-often displaying aggressive behavior towards her. She said she was amazed by the calm, patient, kindness her teacher attended the man with, every time, no matter how he acted. She asked how she did it and Ruth responded: 'but darling, what else is there to do?'.

She told us also, of her marriage dissolving and the terrible struggle she went through, trying to maintain, to meditate, but minute by minute falling back into the emotional turmoil of it.

She said some things that lingered in my head.

Judgement is delusion.

any and all judgements you or I make are delusory, fictitious.

Judgement is aversion talking, fear preventing us from seeing clearly.

All of the mental afflictions we suffer from are definately delusions. All the negative emotions that cause us so much torment- fear, anger, greed, craving, jealousy, pride-all those things are NOT real, they are stories that we make up about others, about ourselves.

We live in these stories, believe in them and suffer from them.

Just stories.

How do we drop the stories? Stop believing in them?

Mindfullness. Meditation. Cultivating the beneficial qualities of our minds, the gift of being human. The ability we all possess to just breathe and be, to perservere, to generate faith and compassion and generosity.

And to face the ugliness, the fear inside us, to feel the feelings underneath, to see the stories we have been holding onto so tightly inside our heads, our bodies, our minds, subconsciously telling over and over to ourselves, like a broken taperecording of failure and misery.

To drop them, bit by bit, as much as we can.

It was a good talk. And a good discussion after.

I look forward to the potluck tonight, with her and her Lotus Sister Sangha.