Meditative Self-Inquiry with Oda Lindner, April 26, 2026
We met at Swanwick Centre outside near the pool, with a couple of new people joining. After a short meditation, Oda introduced a central question for inquiry: What is relationship?
It quickly revealed a paradox: relationship seems to imply both separation and connection. If there were no distance, no distinction, would relationship even exist? Yet without some shared ground, connection would be impossible. This tension opened further inquiry into whether we relate to others directly, or primarily through images and memories. Can we truly relate to someone without the interference of thought? And if we cannot fully know another, or even ourselves, is there a way of relating that does not depend on knowledge?
The conversation deepened by distinguishing between sensing and thinking. Is it possible to be in direct communion with a daisy? If we sense it, can it sense us too?
A pivotal turn came with the question: What is the purpose of relationship? Many observed that relationships are often driven by motive, by seeking something. Can there be relationship without motive? The group explored whether psychological need shapes how we relate, and whether true relationship requires a certain inner wholeness or aloneness. It was suggested that without this, relationship may become transactional. At the same time, relationship itself acts as a mirror through which we come to know ourselves, as Krishnamurti repeatedly pointed out. Is self-understanding possible without relationship?
The inquiry returned to the body, where participants noticed areas of tension—in the chest, and elsewhere. Through attentive observation, there were moments where these tensions softened slightly, suggesting that awareness itself has a transformative quality. This mirrored the earlier question about the mind: can the mind see its own movement clearly enough to become quiet?
Rather than arriving at conclusions, the meeting ended with an open invitation—to remain with these questions, to sense rather than resolve, and to explore whether relationship can be discovered anew, beyond habit, motive, and thought.
To end, a reading from The Urgency of Change by J. Krishnamurti was suggested:
“Can there be relationship if there is no contact, not only physical but at every level of our being, with another? One may hold the hand of another and yet be miles away, wrapped in one’s own thoughts and problems. One may be in a group and yet be painfully alone. So one asks: can there be any kind of relationship with the tree, the flower, the human being, or with the skies and the lovely sunset, when the mind in its activities is isolating itself? And can there be any contact ever, with anything at all, even when the mind is not isolating itself?”
- Anastasia Shtamina
