Retreat Talk #4: Let’s Just Cut to the Chase, Shall We?
Jonathan Foust
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 they shape every human life whether we like it or not. We’ll explore how the heart breaks open in the face of change, how our wounds often become the source of our gifts, and how the self we work so hard to protect may be far less solid than we imagine. This is a talk about reality, about...
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An Earth Day Invitation: Take Your Practice Outside With Heidi Schuttenberg
Jonathan Foust
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, Heidi Schuttenberg, PhD brings both deep personal inquiry and real-world urgency to her teaching. She mentors in Jonathan Foust's Year of Living Mindfully and is dedicated to making applied mindfulness available to those on the front lines environmental conservation and social...
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The Eightfold Path 7: Seeing Clearly to Live Fully
Jonathan Foust
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 from what matters most. Drawing on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, we’ll explore awareness of body, feeling tone, mind, and the deeper patterns of dharma as direct doorways to freedom. Wise awareness is not passive observation; it is precise, embodied, liberating seeing that brings us back to...
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Retreat Talk #3: Working with the Hindrances as a Path to Awakening, with Heidi Schuttenberg
Jonathan Foust
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 practice and a day job in international marine conservation, Heidi Schuttenberg, PhD brings both deep personal inquiry and real-world urgency to her teaching. She mentors in Jonathan Foust's Year of Living Mindfully and is dedicated to making applied mindfulness available to those on the front...
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Retreat Talk #2: The Alchemy of Difficulty: Turning Reactivity into Freedom
Jonathan Foust
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 solve—but the precise conditions for awakening? Together, we’ll explore how mindful investigation transforms reactivity into understanding, and how even the most difficult inner states can become gateways to freedom. Through practical instruction and reflection, you’ll explore how to...
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Retreat Talk #1: Coming Home to the Body, with Lynn Teo
Jonathan Foust
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 awareness. Lynn Teo has been teaching embodied movement and meditation for over 25 years. Deeply grateful to her teachers, she now teaches in the Insight (Vipassana) Tradition and is a Dharma teacher with Open Door Meditation Community in Portland, Maine. A deep believer in Sangha...
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The Eightfold Path, Part 6: How to Do without Overdoing
Jonathan Foust
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 everyday experience, the talk reframes effort as a form of care rather than willpower, inviting a wiser relationship to energy, discipline, and motivation in meditation and daily life. You’ll learn how to recognize when effort has tipped into strain, how to stop feeding unhelpful mental...
info_outline![Beyond the Witness: From Watching to Being [archive talk] show art](https://assets.libsyn.com/item/40650675?height=50&width=50)
Beyond the Witness: From Watching to Being [archive talk]
Jonathan Foust
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.
info_outline![How to Awaken the Witness: From Identification to Observation [archive talk] show art](https://assets.libsyn.com/item/40650660?height=50&width=50)
How to Awaken the Witness: From Identification to Observation [archive talk]
Jonathan Foust
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.
info_outline![The Illusion of Self: How Mindfulness Reveals True Freedom [archive talk] show art](https://assets.libsyn.com/item/40650645?height=50&width=50)
The Illusion of Self: How Mindfulness Reveals True Freedom [archive talk]
Jonathan Foust
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.
info_outlineThis 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 from what matters most. Drawing on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, we’ll explore awareness of body, feeling tone, mind, and the deeper patterns of dharma as direct doorways to freedom. Wise awareness is not passive observation; it is precise, embodied, liberating seeing that brings us back to the vividness of this moment and helps us live with greater authenticity, intimacy, and presence.
You’ll learn how to ground attention in the body, recognize feeling tone before it hardens into grasping or aversion, identify mind states without becoming trapped inside them, and see the lawful patterns of impermanence, suffering, and not-self unfolding in real time. We’ll explore how mindfulness interrupts automatic living and reveals a more deliberate, wholehearted way of being. By the end, you’ll have practical ways to deepen awareness in everyday life so that you are not merely getting through your days, but inhabiting them fully—with clarity, freedom, and fewer regrets.