Jonathan Foust
250 episodes - English - Latest episode: 16 days ago - ★★★★★ - 330 ratingsSenior teacher at the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and co-founder of the Meditation Teacher Training Institute, Jonathan Foust share weekly talks, guided meditations and inquiries that explore how to cultivate an awakened heart and mind.
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Episodes
Who are You in the Absence of Desire?
April 09, 2024 20:18 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBThis talk explores who you are free from the wanting mind. You’ll learn about the nature of desire, strategies for working with a greed-filled mind, what can arise as desire lessens and finally, some thoughts on being desire-free and enlightenment itself.
Who are You in the Absence of Delusion?
April 02, 2024 23:27 - 44 minutes - 41 MBThis talk explores who you are in the absence of ignorance and confusion. You’ll explore the nature of delusion, strategies for overcoming delusion and being more clearly into the nature of reality and what it means to be awake beyond the fluctuations of emotions, thoughts and beliefs.
Who are You in the Absence of Hatred, Judgement and Ill-Will?
March 26, 2024 16:33 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBThis talk explores who you are beyond the reach of aversion. You’ll learn about how, in our relationship to hatred there can be a rush to premature transcendence and how, by turning toward aversion, what is possible when hatred ceases, namely the arising of inter-connectedness, compassion and love.
Who are You Without a Sense of Your Self?
March 19, 2024 14:14 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBThis talk explores who you are beyond the conditioned self. You’ll learn about what arises with the dissolution of the ego: A greater sense of interconnectedness, an increased flow of compassion and empathy and not least, a more tangible sense of freedom from stress and suffering.
Seventh of the Seven Factors Cultivating Steadiness and Equanimity [recast]
March 13, 2024 17:17 - 46 minutes - 42.3 MBThis talk explores the seventh factor of awakening. You’ll learn how this factor is the the complete expression of all and as you cultivate both spaciousness and steadiness, wisdom and compassion can flow unrestricted.
Sixth of the Seven Factors: Cultivating Concentration and One-Pointedness [recast]
March 09, 2024 17:04 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBThis talk explores the power of sustained attention. You’ll learn about the consequence of chronic distraction, the levels of concentration you can achieve in your meditation practice, how to balance concentration with deep relaxation and how to bring more sustained focus into your life.
Fifth of the Seven Factors: Cultivating Calm and Tranquility [recast]
February 28, 2024 14:22 - 22 minutes - 21 MBThis talk explores how to cultivate a calm and relaxed presence. You’ll learn how tranquility is critical to mindfulness practice and sets the stage for more and more intimate awareness of what is happening and how you are holding it.
Fourth of the Seven Factors: Cultivating Rapture and Joy [recast]
February 13, 2024 18:17 - 45 minutes - 42 MBThis talk explores ways you can bring more joy into your life. You’ll learn about the two essential forms of joy and how practicing ‘yes’ to life can cultivate more aliveness, radiance and upwelling of well-being in your life.
Third of the Seven Factors: Cultivating Energy and Vigor [recast]
February 09, 2024 18:25 - 47 minutes - 43.5 MBThis talk explores ways you can cultivate greater aliveness and vitality. You’ll learn how mental and physical energy, vitality and aliveness are integral to the process of being more awake, aware and present in your life.
Second of the Seven Factors: The Art of Investigation [recast]
January 31, 2024 18:50 - 48 minutes - 44.1 MBThis talk explores the power of looking closer at what is present. You’ll learn how cultivating curiosity, examining what is arising and how you are relating to it can lead to not only greater freedom, but profound insights into the nature of reality.
The First of the Seven Factors: Establish Mindfulness [recast]
January 26, 2024 16:08 - 46 minutes - 42.1 MBThis talk explores the factors that go into not only waking up, but working with the most profound challenges in your life. You’ll learn how recognizing the filters through which you perceive is truly a key to liberation and how some specific techniques can sharpen your awareness of when mindfulness is slipping away.
The Power of Intention + A Year in Review
January 09, 2024 14:35 - 1 hour - 54.8 MBThis talk explores the impact of having your personal North Star. You’ll learn how helpful it can be to clearly articulate what you most want, to reflect on the good in your life, to acknowledge what grows you and what calls you. I share a bit from my own Year in Review and offer some time for your reflection.
What Mindfulness Off the Cushion Looks Like
December 20, 2023 14:42 - 1 hour - 55.5 MBThis talk explores some tips and tricks for being more mindful during your day. You’ll learn the fundamentals of applied mindfulness, my morning routine, how I try to remind myself to be more mindful during the day …. and the importance of being mindful when you hit challenges. Finding your optimal routines can make a huge difference in feeling more present and satisfied in your life. My routines may vary quite a bit from yours!
The Keys to Cultivating Faith and Trust
December 12, 2023 15:06 - 1 hour - 55.1 MBThis talk explores the dance of trust, faith and doubt. You'll learn what gets in the way of trust, three levels of maturing faith, how embracing and investigating doubt is integral to wisdom and and suggestions as how to navigate the leaps of faith in your life.
Four Reasons I Love My Plant-Based Lifestyle
December 06, 2023 14:52 - 1 hour - 52.2 MBPlease note there are a few graphic examples animal suffering from my experience working on farms that might make you uncomfortable. This talk reflects on my journey with different diets and food philosophies. You’ll learn why and how I landed on a plant-based lifestyle to dramatically cultivate my health and vitality, support the environment, explore how to live as cruelty-free as possible and to explore what I call ‘eating as a spiritual practice.’
You Can’t Stop the Surf, but You Can Surf the Waves [archive]
November 28, 2023 18:03 - 1 hour - 50.3 MBThis talk explores how to go with the flow. You’ll learn how life is filled with constant challenge and how, when you learn to let go and bring full attention to the here and now, you can open to new possibilities in your life.
Gratitude and Giving as a Spiritual Practice
November 21, 2023 13:34 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBThis talk explores to transformative power of generosity. You’ll learn how giving as a spiritual practice reveals what is between you and a truly generous heart, how generosity requires you learn how to fully receive … and the Buddha’s teachings on how fundamental generosity is to the experience of liberation.
When to Step Up and When to Step Back [recast]
November 15, 2023 16:22 - 42 minutes - 39.2 MBThis talk explores the art of engaging and disengaging. You’ll learn about stimulus / response and how your practice of meditation can open up more space for you to be more skillful as to how you respond to the moment — and to the challenges that arise in your life.
On Learning to Love the Mystery
November 08, 2023 17:16 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBThis talk explores moving from conceptual to non-conceptual awareness. You’ll learn what gets in the way of feeling the mystery, how ‘the five aggregates’ make up each moment, the doorway into non-conceptual perception as well as the doorway of gratitude. How My Son Ruined My Life: Selma Baraz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojF-o_eWp-o
Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 5: Love is the Highest Thought of All
November 02, 2023 17:18 - 1 hour - 50.3 MBThis talk explores the power of streaming thoughts toward love, compassion, kindness, joy and equanimity. You’ll learn about the origin of the heart practices, how here love starts as a thought and moves into an experience, the system for loving kindness and what it means to be awake both in heart and mind.
A Heart That Can Hold it All
October 26, 2023 18:44 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBThis talk explores how to cultivate both wisdom and compassion. You’ll learn how suffering is both internal and external, the keys to the release of suffering and how to foster your intention to be awake in the midst of turbulent times.
Is it OK to Be Happy in a Turbulent World? [recast]
October 19, 2023 12:52 - 46 minutes - 42.5 MBThis talk explores how to increase your happiness level. You’ll learn how stress and dissatisfaction can be transformed and how happiness is not only your birthright, but your greatest responsibility and contribution to others.
Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 4: Bare Attention and Gratitude
October 06, 2023 20:29 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBThis talk explores the practice of Bare Attention and how suffering ceases in the experience of gratitude. You’ll learn about the distinction of the linear mind and the intuitive mind, the practice Bare Attention and a technique for opening to gratitude as a way of shifting the mind to a more fluid and intuitive state.
Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 3: Investigating Beliefs
September 28, 2023 16:06 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBThis talk explores how to deconstruct beliefs. You’ll learn about the origin of thoughts and beliefs, the art of interrupting the stream of thinking, the art of deconstructing beliefs and the importance, when you do this work, to err on the side of safety and self-care.
Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 2: The Power of Mental Noting
September 21, 2023 16:27 - 1 hour - 54.5 MBThis talk explores the power of noting or labeling your inner experience. You’ll learn how you can cut through discursive thinking by training your attention to the sense fields, but also what it means to ‘take the seat of the witness’ and note or label what is happening inside.
Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking, Part 1: Embodied Awareness
September 13, 2023 13:25 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBThis talk explores how to cut through the trance of thinking. You’ll learn how turning toward awareness itself reveals how much you rely on thinking and some practical strategies using embodied awareness for ‘remembering’ who and what you truly are.
How to Increase Your Capacity for Wisdom and Insight
August 31, 2023 12:50 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBThis talk explores how you can open to greater insight and wisdom in your life. You’ll learn about the characteristics of a wise person, what gets in the way of wisdom, the anatomy of intuition and insight and the natural flowering of compassion when you see clearly into the nature of reality.
Concentration, Mindfulness and Insight
August 23, 2023 15:30 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBThis talk explores the power of paying attention on purpose as well as the power of non-judging awareness. You’ll learn about how getting control of your concentration can make a huge difference in your life as well as what happens when you turn attention to awareness itself. This talk includes a number of practical, experiential reflections.
The Keys to Lasting Happiness [archive]
August 17, 2023 15:20 - 47 minutes - 43 MBThis talk explores how you can cultivate lasting happiness. You'll learn how to avoid the biggest trap in seeking happiness and how you can cultivate happiness both externally - through wise and skillful action - as well as internally - by how you pay attention.
The Best Technique [archive]
August 12, 2023 13:30 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBThis talk reveals the best technique for awakening heart and mind. You’ll learn about techniques that awaken your capacity for sustained present-moment awareness, techniques for cultivating awareness of change, techniques for purifying the heart and techniques for opening to the mystery. And at the end, the best technique of all.
Frank Sinatra Got It Right: Do Be Do Be Do
August 01, 2023 15:28 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBThis talk explores what I think of as the “Frank Sinatra Sutta.” You’ll learn the importance in meditation - and life - of willful doing combined with conscious being. The result of this balance is ‘knowing,’ the arising of insight into the nature of reality itself.
Change Yourself, Change the World (archive)
July 25, 2023 16:46 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBThis archive talk explores how your perception of stress and suffering in the world is a mirror your inner world. You’ll learn how, by reflecting on the core teachings of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the path that leads to the cessation of suffering, you can change yourself. And by changing yourself, you can truly change the world.
4 Reasons I Meditate
July 19, 2023 12:31 - 47 minutes - 43.9 MBThis talk explores why, after 52 years of practice, I still meditate. You’ll learn about the science behind meditation, what all great traditions say about the practice, the power of empirical evidence and the potency of the intention to live in authentic cooperation with reality.
More Practice Questions with Tara and Jonathan (Part 2)
July 11, 2023 21:43 - 58 minutes - 53.3 MBWe’re back! We had so much fun last time we are doing another. Here’s the second installment of practice questions with Tara Brach and Jonathan Foust.
Practice Questions with Tara and Jonathan (Part 1)
June 28, 2023 17:16 - 56 minutes - 51.8 MBJonathan interviews his wife, Tara Brach, regarding common practice questions and weighs in on a few himself.
Understanding Joy [archive talk]
June 20, 2023 12:26 - 48 minutes - 44.1 MBThis talk explores how to increase your capacity for joy and wholesome states. You’ll learn about the nature of Joy, what gets in the way of the experience and how to cultivate more and more positive and fulfilling qualities of presence.
Love and the Fear of Losing Love
June 14, 2023 12:58 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBThis talk explores the near-enemy of love: Attachment. You’ll learn about the nature of attachment and attachment styles in relationship as well as keys to healing what holds you back from loving fully.
The Antidote to Imposter Syndrome
June 08, 2023 20:19 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBThis talk explores how to free yourself from feeling like an imposter. You’ll learn the power of self-awareness, the importance of investigating inner states and how to break out of the box of the doubting mind. You’ll also explore ways you can reframe your experience and turn attention to sincerity, service and the possibility of a life of authenticity and overflow.
Conversations with Depth Practitioners: Advice on Intensive Practice with Tracy Budd
May 24, 2023 17:18 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBSoon after retiring, Tracy Budd, who had a strong meditation practice, embarked on an exploration of meditating for four hours a day following the Elephant Path and the teachings of Culadasa. In this interview we explore what happened over the course the year, the breakthroughs, the breakdowns, the insights and what he learned about doing intensive practice at home. You’ll find this interview inspiring, particularly if you have ever had fantasies of putting everything aside and doing t...
More on From Fear to Wisdom (2 of 2)
May 18, 2023 11:41 - 46 minutes - 42.3 MBWe continue our exploration on moving from Fear to clear-seeing. You’ll explore a few protocols that have helped me enormously in shifting from feeling caught to feeling empowered again. Fear can serve as an early-warning detection system and when explored mindfully, can point the way toward more skillful means. I reference The Sedona Method, the work of Tim Ferris and the work of Byron Katie.
From Fear to Wisdom (1 of 2)
May 11, 2023 13:38 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBThis talk explores how to move from Fear to Clear-Seeing and new possibilities. You’ll learn how unresolved fear restricts the possibilities in your life and how you can turn toward fear through cognitive processes as well as somatic inquiry. When you shift from “How do I get rid of this?” to “What can I learn from this?” you may start to feel new possibilities.
From the Ruthless Critic to Wise Discrimination
May 04, 2023 17:44 - 46 minutes - 42.3 MBThis talk explores how you can transform your relationship with your inner critic. You’ll learn the origins of negativity bias, how that critical voice forms in your early development and how the miracle of self-awareness can lead to a life guided by wise discrimination. This is an 'encore' session from the Monday night class at the Unitarian Universtalist Church in Arlgington, VA
Sacred Wounds, Sacred Gifts
April 28, 2023 11:51 - 43 minutes - 40 MBThis talk explores how you might transform your deepest wounds into sacred gifts. You’ll learn how stress and suffering are inevitable and how, when you deeply examine your wounds, you can unveil the gifts they offer. We’ll explore the concept of the wounded healer and how being transparent with your wounds can bring you into deeper intimacy with the world around you. I mentioned the book Feeding Your Demons by Tsultrume Allione and the Enneagram, a powerful model for transformation.
How to Heal What’s Broken
April 19, 2023 14:49 - 47 minutes - 43.4 MBThis talk explores the mechanics of healing (and how I’m healing a bone fracture.) You’ll learn how critical it is to make room for all your reactions and how to ask yourself an important question that can make room for feeling whole. You’ll explore the art of ‘having tea with your demons,’ three steps in a healing meditation and ultimately, how to open to the quantum field for feeling more whole.
The Quickest Way to Be Happy
April 14, 2023 16:16 - 41 minutes - 38 MBThis talk explores the nature of happiness. You’ll learn how happiness truly is ‘here and now,’ how important it is to actively explore what is between you and feeling happy, how happiness is a reflection of your true nature and a model or assessing your happiness level. This talk is from 2019, offered live at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington in Arlington, VA.
Four Ideals to Guide Your Practice
April 04, 2023 16:37 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBThis talk explores four sutras offered by the Buddha on how to awaken your heart and mind. You’ll learn the importance of cultivating a lifelong aspiration to awaken, to actively cultivate spiritual friendships, to be open and kind and to take time away from the complexity of life to see ever more clearly into the nature of reality. This talk is inspired by an article in Tricycle Magazine, summer 2022, by Dale S. Wright entitled “Four Ideals to Guide Your Practice.”
Compassion Strategies for Working with Pain
March 30, 2023 22:51 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBThis talk explores how to draw on compassion when in pain. You’ll learn how compassion must be balanced with wisdom (tough love) and a powerful technique for opening the frame of compassion that can dramatically shift your personal experience of pain. Finally, we’ll explore the impact of opening the heart to the suffering of others and how that can influence and cultivate the heart.
Deconstructing Pain
March 15, 2023 18:21 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBThis talk explores strategies for working with physical pain and beyond. You’ll learn about your primary and secondary response to pain, how to discern your ‘pain recipe,’ the cost of ignoring the messages of pain and a practice where you’ll change the frame of awareness when working with challenging sensations.
Pain is a Holy Messenger
March 09, 2023 23:51 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBThis talk explores how to shift your relationship to physical pain. You’ll learn how pain lives in both the body and mind, how ‘pain’ is looking out for your well-being and how your attention can dramatically affect your experience of pain.
My Thoughts on “How We Live is How We Die”
March 01, 2023 21:19 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBThis talk offers some thoughts and practices on how to stay awake through the journey of your life …. As told through the lens of a recent travel misadventure. You’ll learn about the nature of the ‘two selves,’ the conditioned quest for control, the power of turning toward your greatest fears and thoughts on what continues after death.