Jonathan Foust

Jonathan Foust

About

Senior 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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176 episodes

Who are You in the Absence of Hatred, Judgement and Ill-Will?

This 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.

45m
Mar 26, 2024
Who are You Without a Sense of Your Self?

This 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.

45m
Mar 19, 2024
Seventh of the Seven Factors Cultivating Steadiness and Equanimity [recast]

This 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.

46m
Mar 13, 2024
Sixth of the Seven Factors: Cultivating Concentration and One-Pointedness [recast]

This 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.

45m
Mar 09, 2024
Fifth of the Seven Factors: Cultivating Calm and Tranquility [recast]

This 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.

1h 4m
Feb 28, 2024
Fourth of the Seven Factors: Cultivating Rapture and Joy [recast]

This 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.

45m
Feb 13, 2024
Third of the Seven Factors: Cultivating Energy and Vigor [recast]

This 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.

47m
Feb 09, 2024
Second of the Seven Factors: The Art of Investigation [recast]

This 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.

48m
Jan 31, 2024
The First of the Seven Factors: Establish Mindfulness [recast]

This 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.

46m
Jan 26, 2024
The Power of Intention + A Year in Review

This 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.

1h 6m
Jan 09, 2024
What Mindfulness Off the Cushion Looks Like

This 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!

1h 7m
Dec 20, 2023
The Keys to Cultivating Faith and Trust

This 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.

1h 6m
Dec 12, 2023
Four Reasons I Love My Plant-Based Lifestyle

Please 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.’  

1h 4m
Dec 06, 2023
You Can’t Stop the Surf, but You Can Surf the Waves [archive]

This 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.

1h 4m
Nov 28, 2023
Gratitude and Giving as a Spiritual Practice

This 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.

45m
Nov 21, 2023
When to Step Up and When to Step Back [recast]

This 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.

42m
Nov 15, 2023
On Learning to Love the Mystery

This 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

45m
Nov 08, 2023
Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 5: Love is the Highest Thought of All

This 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.

1h 5m
Nov 02, 2023
A Heart That Can Hold it All

This 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.

45m
Oct 26, 2023
Is it OK to Be Happy in a Turbulent World? [recast]

This 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.

46m
Oct 19, 2023
Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 4: Bare Attention and Gratitude

This 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.

43m
Oct 06, 2023
Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 3: Investigating Beliefs

This 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.

45m
Sep 28, 2023
Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 2: The Power of Mental Noting

This 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.

1h 6m
Sep 21, 2023
Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking, Part 1: Embodied Awareness

This 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.

45m
Sep 13, 2023
How to Increase Your Capacity for Wisdom and Insight

This 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.

44m
Aug 31, 2023
Concentration, Mindfulness and Insight

This 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.

45m
Aug 23, 2023
The Keys to Lasting Happiness [archive]

This 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.    

47m
Aug 17, 2023
The Best Technique [archive]

This 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.

45m
Aug 12, 2023
Frank Sinatra Got It Right: Do Be Do Be Do

This 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.  

45m
Aug 01, 2023
Change Yourself, Change the World (archive)

This 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.

45m
Jul 25, 2023