PODCAST · religion
Jonathan Foust
by Jonathan Foust
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.
Episodes
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The Art of Starting Over …. Over and Over
This talk explores one of the most essential—and liberating—skills on the spiritual path: the willingness to begin again. Inspired by S. N. Goenka's simple instruction to "start again," we'll look beyond returning to the present moment and explore how each new beginning also invites us to…
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The Ten Perfections #10: Live in Balance
This talk explores the tenth of the ten perfections. You'll learn how you cannot make steadiness and serenity happen, but can create the conditions that allow this inner state to arise. When you remember the fundamental quality of reality, you can more easily open to embrace your true nature.
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The Ten Perfections #9 : Live from Your Heart
The talk explores the power of loving kindness. You'll learn how to be more of a well-wisher to all, some techniques to more effectively express kindness in the world and a reflection on what might happen in your life if you were to be more adept at responding to challenges with an open heart.
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The Ten Perfections #8: Stay the Course
This talk explores the power of grit. You'll learn the importance of first creating goals that are fully aligned with your heart and spirit and then developing your capacity to stay on your path, developing both perseverance as well as deep, intuitive inner listening.
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The Ten Perfections #7: Live in Truth
This talk explores how to attune to what is true. You'll learn how to discern between conventional and eternal truth, two essential teachings of truth and how to use your relationships and wise speech as a doorway to greater clarity and self-awareness.
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The Ten Perfections #6: Stay Present Under Pressure
This talk explores how to cultivate the quality of patience and self-restraint. You'll learn about the power of refraining from those who have caused you harm, how to endure hardship, how to cultivate greater confidence in ultimate truth and about the near-enemies of patience and forbearance.
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The Ten Perfections #5: Engage with Skillful Effort
This talk explores how to cultivate vitality, courage and resilience in your life. You'll learn how you can manage the energy you have and how to build vigor and confidence to pursue that which calls you.
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The Ten Perfections #4: See More Clearly
This talk explores how to cultivate wisdom and insight. You'll learn about the importance of cultivating the wise heart, what gets in the way of seeing clearly, the anatomy of an insight and how to balance wisdom with compassion.
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The Ten Perfections #3: Let Go
This talk explores the potential of mindful renunciation. You'll learn how critically important it is to know what is most important, cultivate the thoughts, behaviors and actions that will bring about that outcome and as well, identify and modify the the thoughts, behaviors and actions that get…
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The Ten Perfections: #2 Walk Your Talk
This talk explores how paying attention to your behavior can support you in your life. You'll learn how all traditions have guidelines regarding your moral behavior, how morality is often based on a negativity bias and how ultimately, it's up to you to determine what you really want and define…
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The Ten Perfections #1: Give Freely
This talk explores the power of cultivating an attitude of love and care in your life. You'll learn what the Buddha said about giving, how intimately receiving is connected to generosity, the shadow-side of the practice and the power of taking generous actions when you feel called.
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Conversations with Depth Practitioners: Stephen Josephs
How has your meditation practice shifted and changed since you first took it up? Please join this conversation with Stephen Josephs, who shares how his mediation has evolved over 60 years of daily practice. As one of the leaders in the Kundalini Yoga tradition at it's peak in the west, Stephen…
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The 8 Fold Path 8: The Collected Mind: How Concentration Opens the Door to Freedom
This talk explores the culminating factor of the Eightfold Path—Right Concentration—and the profound power of a steady, unified mind. In a world of constant distraction and fragmented attention, we investigate how deep focus becomes a gateway to inner stillness, clarity, and freedom. Drawing from...
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Retreat #5: All Roads Lead to Now
This talk explores the movement from doing to being—from the disciplined application of effort to the natural ease of presence. After training attention, stabilizing the mind, and refining investigation, there comes a threshold where practice no longer adds anything, but begins to let go of…
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Retreat Talk #4: Let's Just Cut to the Chase, Shall We?
This talk explores what remains when we stop circling around the edges of practice and face the deepest truths directly. With humor, candor, and a willingness to take the red pill, we'll look at the three characteristics the Buddha pointed to—impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self—and how...
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An Earth Day Invitation: Take Your Practice Outside With Heidi Schuttenberg
The best meditation hall has no walls. This talk explores how nature cultivates focus, non-judgment, and belonging, and how mindfulness can help us stay engaged with the world's pain without burning out. Bio: With 25 years of Vipassana practice and a day job in international marine conservation,...
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The Eightfold Path 7: Seeing Clearly to Live Fully
This talk explores Wise Awareness as the art of seeing life clearly enough to actually live it. So much of human regret comes not from dramatic mistakes, but from drifting through our days half-awake—disconnected from our bodies, driven by unseen reactions, caught in mental weather, and estranged...
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Retreat Talk #3: Working with the Hindrances as a Path to Awakening, with Heidi Schuttenberg
The third talk in a weeklong meditation retreat, with Heidi Schuttenberg. Our unwelcome visitors are guides to our freedom. This talk explores the Buddha's five hindrances and offers practical tools for meeting them with compassion, curiosity, and even gratitude. With 25 years of Vipassana…
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Retreat Talk #2: The Alchemy of Difficulty: Turning Reactivity into Freedom
The second talk in a weeklong retreat. We often assume insight arises from calm, clarity, or deep concentration. But in truth, it is often born in the very moments we want to escape. This talk invites a radical reframe: what if restlessness, doubt, and emotional turbulence are not problems to...
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Retreat Talk #1: Coming Home to the Body, with Lynn Teo
This is the first talk of a weeklong retreat in 2026. Lynn Teo starts by exploring various ways to resource the nervous system to support the capacity to be present to the moment's direct experience. Then, we investigate what mindfulness is and how mindfulness of the body supports present moment...
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The Eightfold Path, Part 6: How to Do without Overdoing
This talk explores Right Effort as one of the most misunderstood elements of the Eightfold Path—revealing how much of our suffering comes not from a lack of effort, but from pushing, striving, and forcing ourselves in ways that create inner violence. Drawing on classical Buddhist teachings and...
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Beyond the Witness: From Watching to Being [archive talk]
This talk explores the power of self-observation and what lies beyond the sense of self. You'll learn how the witness can free you from the tyranny of the mind and your reactivity as well as what can happen when you explore being aware of the witness and what lies beyond.
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How to Awaken the Witness: From Identification to Observation [archive talk]
This talk explores the liberating factor of self-observation. You'll learn about how you can cultivate the optimal environment to develop the witness, the near-enemy of the practice and what it means to be aware of the light behind the observer.
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The Illusion of Self: How Mindfulness Reveals True Freedom [archive talk]
This talk explores how the most simple mindfulness practices point to liberation. You'll learn about the destination of cultivating present-moment awareness, understanding the nature of impermanence, recognizing inter-dependence and the power of non-attachment.
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The Eightfold Path, Part 5: How to Make a Living without Selling Your Soul
This talk explores Right Livelihood as a living inquiry rather than a rigid moral rule, asking how we can earn a living without gradually betraying our values, vitality, or sense of dignity. Grounded in the Buddha's teachings and everyday work life, the talk examines the ethical foundation of do…
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Listening as Spiritual Practice Why Unguarded Attention Is the Greatest Gift
This talk explores listening as a radical act of compassion at moments of loss, when words often rush in to ease our own discomfort rather than meet another's pain. We examine how common responses to grief—reassurance, advice, spiritual framing, or positivity—can unintentionally distance us, and...
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How to Surf the Waves of Uncertainty, Part 2: Practices for Cultivating Steadiness [archive talk]
More on how to keep you keel in the water when navigating uncertainty. You'll learn some practical strategies for finding 'refuge,' a place of presence, particularly accessing Wisdom - clear seeing, Compassion - a heart that can hold it all, Presence - the space of awareness itself, and Skillful...
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How to Surf the Waves of Uncertainty, Part 1: Practices for Cultivating Steadiness [archive talk]
This talk explores how you might cultivate greater steadiness in turbulent times. You'll learn some practical tools for finding refuge in present-moment awareness, in cultivating Witness Consciousness and in watching the flow of phenomena with awake awareness and an open heart.
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What Is Your North Star? Questions That Awaken Wise Intention
This talk explores wise intention as a living, moment-to-moment inquiry rather than a fixed decision or self-improvement project. Drawing from the Buddhist understanding of Right Intention, it reframes intention as an embodied process of noticing what genuinely supports clarity and ease, honestly...
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Seeing Clearly: Insight and the Path of Liberation
This talk explores the liberating power of clear seeing — vipassanā, or insight — the capacity to recognize things as they truly are rather than as we wish them to be. Through the practice of mindful attention, we begin to see through the illusions that shape our experience: the illusion that...
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Four Phrases That Heal: Loving the Unlovable [archive talk]
This talk explores how to consciously direct the inner process of healing and release. Drawing on the classic teachings of Ho'oponopono, it introduces four phrases that guide your attention to: • Taking responsibility for your inner experience • Attuning to the process of release • Reflecting on...
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The Eightfold Path 4: Understanding Right Action and the Ethics of Everday Life
This talk explores the heart of the Fourth Noble Eightfold Path factor—Right Action—as a living expression of mindfulness and compassion. We look at how ethical conduct arises not from rigid rule-following but from moment-to-moment awareness, attunement to the body's signals, and a sincere...
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Do Unto Others: Mindfulness and the Golden Rule [archive talk]
This talk explores how to apply the Golden Rule in the context of mindfulness practice. You'll learn how this timeless guidance ties into the practice of compassion (Karuna), interconnectedness (Dependent Origination), loving kindness (Metta) and non-harming (Ahimsa).
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The Anatomy of Now: A Somatic Pathway to Awake Awareness
This talk explores the radical simplicity and depth of awakening to the present moment. Drawing on early Buddhist teachings and modern somatic inquiry, we'll investigate the building blocks of experience — sensation, feeling tone, perception, and awareness — to understand how the mind creates…
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Your Obstacles are the Path: Grace in Difficulty [archive talk]
This talk explores the possibility of 'problems' as profound opportunities for growth and expansion. You'll learn the importance of equanimity, cultivating convergent and divergent thinking and deep investigation into the nature of attachment and the nature of self.
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The Eightfold Path 3: Wise Speech - Speaking from Clarity, Kindness and Truth
This talk explores how every word we speak carries the power to create harmony or division, awakening or confusion. Drawing from the Buddha's teaching on Right Speech—truthful, kind, useful, and timely communication—you'll discover how mindfulness transforms the way we express ourselves and…
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The Space Between Sensation and the Story
This talk explores the powerful and often-overlooked moment between what we feel and what we think about what we feel. Rooted in both Buddhist insight and somatic inquiry, we'll examine how raw sensation arises, how the mind instantly weaves a narrative around it, and how those stories—when left...
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Living from the Still Point: Taking the Seat of the Witness
This talk explores the power and peace found at the still point—the place of awareness untouched by the waves of thought and emotion. When we take the seat of the witness, we discover a dimension of consciousness that is both intimate and vast, both deeply embodied and profoundly free. Drawing on...
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Listening from Within: The Dharma of the Felt Sense
This talk explores the transformative power of tuning into the felt sense—the subtle, bodily knowing that lies beneath thought and emotion. Rooted in early Buddhist teachings and supported by contemporary somatic practices, the felt sense offers a direct path to presence, insight, and release. By...
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One Breath at a Time: Anchoring Awareness in the Present
This talk explores the simple yet profound practice of using the breath as an anchor for awareness. In a world where distraction and stress pull us in countless directions, the breath is always available as a doorway back into presence. Drawing from the Buddha's teachings on mindfulness of...
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The Eightfold Path, Part 2: Living from Wise Intention
This talk explores the second step of the Eightfold Path, Wise Intention—the heart's compass that points us toward freedom. Rooted in the Buddha's teachings, Wise Intention asks us to orient our lives around letting go of what doesn't serve, cultivating goodwill instead of ill will, and living…
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Your Body is a Temple: Coming Home to Sensation
This talk explores the profound practice of coming home to the body—not as an object to fix or improve, but as sacred ground for awakening. Drawing on early Buddhist teachings and somatic insights, we'll reflect on what it means to honor the body as a temple of presence. Through stor25ies,...
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The Eightfold Path, Part 1: The Path to Freedom
This talk explores how the Buddha's Eightfold Path offers a clear, practical guide to living with greater wisdom, compassion, and inner freedom in everyday life. We'll look at how each step on the path supports both personal transformation and the well-being of others. Wise View, the first step,...
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Begin Where You Are: Laying the Groundwork of Mindfulness
This talk explores how to begin a mindfulness practice by starting exactly where you are. Rather than striving for a particular state or trying to "do it right," we look at how mindfulness arises through simple remembering—the act of returning to presence, again and again. We'll reflect on how…
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Choose What is Already Changing [archive talk]
This talk explores how to embrace impermanence. You'll learn about the inevitability of change and how understanding your reactivity and biases can help you access a quality of awareness that can help you move from reactivity to wisdom, compassion, creativity and enthusiasm.
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Your True Nature is Already Here [archive talk]
This talk explores the nature of 'true nature.' You'll learn more about the nature of 'true nature,' what gets in the way of experiencing this primal quality of being and some doorways of practice that can bring you into an intimate, embodied sense of presence.
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How to Access the Flow State, Part 2 [archive talk]
This talk explores the mechanics for entering the flow state. You'll learn the role mindfulness plays in setting up the flows state, a review of triggers that can be helpful, how applying the principles of flow to meditation can deepen your practice and some cautions and concerns about the practice.
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How to Access the Flow State, Part 1 [archive talk]
This talk explores what it means to be in flow. You'll learn about the magic of being in the flow state, some distinctions between mindfulness and flow and how to be more aware of how you consciously or unconsciously sabotage the flow state.
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How More Focus Can Transform Your Life, Part 2 [archive talk]
This talk explores the power of willful attention inwardly as well as in the world. You'll learn some strategies for inner focus in your meditation as well as some outer focus to cultivate sustained attention on what is most important to you in your life right now.
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How More Focus Can Transform Your Life, Part 1 [archive talk]
This talk explores the power of willful attention. You'll learn what the Buddha said about concentration and liberation, some essential practices for deepening focus and how skillfully applying concentration can open up new inner worlds.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
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.
HOSTED BY
Jonathan Foust
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How many episodes does Jonathan Foust have?
Jonathan Foust currently has 50 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is 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.
How often does Jonathan Foust release new episodes?
Jonathan Foust has 50 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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Who hosts Jonathan Foust?
Jonathan Foust is created and hosted by Jonathan Foust.
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