We met at the Swanwick Centre. The dialogue opened with a question about whether dialogue itself can become a refuge from direct experience: “Are we using this to, in some way, escape back into concepts or intellectual notions and cutting ourselves off from the whole field of sensitivity?”

“Can dialogue go beyond the verbal?” One participant described, as K suggests, listening not only to another person, but also to oneself – to the reactions, interpretations, and impulses arising while listening.

The moment we say, “That is a bird,” has something been lost? “Is the label a screen?” Naming has practical value, yet the group explored whether we can notice the movement that turns a living experience into something fixed and already known.

From there came another question: “What is happening when we move from something limitless to something limited?” The issue was not whether we should stop using words, knowledge, or images, but whether we become trapped in them. The same inquiry extended to the self: “What is a self-image actually referring to?” The danger may lie not in thought itself, but in mistaking its descriptions for reality.

Fear and emotion brought the discussion closer to the body. “How do we learn to dispatch quickly our imagined fears?” Participants explored the distinction between raw sensation, feeling, and the interpretations thought places upon them. “Does feeling have anything to do with thought?” And can joy, awe, love, or beauty arise before the mind has time to explain them?

Zeenat pointed the group back to vitality. The possibility that life is simpler and more alive when we are not constantly trying to control, categorize, and secure it. “What if joy is not something you are generating, but something you are simply connecting with?” In moments when thought falls silent, what remains? As the dialogue ended, one participant recalled a simple phrase by Mukesh: “It’s a beautiful way to live.”

 

• Anastasia Shtamina

The Sunday dialogue began with the question: “Is there something that matters more than survival?” The group explored the relationship between physical and psychological survival, and whether the need for psychological security has become intertwined with our basic instinct to survive. While food, shelter and clothing are necessary, the desire for belonging, approval, status and security can extend far beyond physical needs. Can we seek physical security without also seeking psychological security?

The discussion considered how fear of rejection, the need to belong, self-image and concern about others’ opinions may once have supported survival, yet can also become psychological traps. If there is always something to protect or fear, is psychological security ultimately an illusion? Could freedom begin when we see clearly how the “me” is constructed through images, memories and thought?

The inquiry then turned to surrender. What does it mean to surrender, and what are we surrendering to? Surrender was not seen as passivity or giving up responsibility, but perhaps as letting go of the urge to control while remaining fully responsive. One participant described the difficulty of working within an organization where those in power were causing harm, raising the question of how to act responsibly without becoming consumed by resistance. The image arose of being more like a “colander than a dam”—doing what one can while accepting what lies beyond one’s control.

The dialogue also explored the structures of organizations and society, and how fear, competition and conformity can keep us psychologically bound to them. Leaving one system may not solve the problem if the same patterns are simply reproduced elsewhere. Perhaps the deeper question is whether we can understand the fear and conditioning that keep us bound.

This led to reflections on love and connection. Is genuine connection possible while the mind is occupied with strengthening the “me”? The group considered moments when the story of oneself temporarily falls away, leaving a sense of peace and presence.

The dialogue ended by asking whether something beyond thought and conditioning becomes visible when the constant movement of the self comes to an end. The meeting concluded with five minutes of silence.

• Anastasia Shtamina

We met at Swanwick, outside near the pool. The dialogue began with an exploration of the quality of togetherness. A participant asked whether, in dialogue, it is possible to speak in a way that is “for everyone,” rather than from a personal opinion or position. This opened the question: What is required for that sense of togetherness? The group explored whether togetherness means simply accepting different opinions, or whether it is possible to look beneath opinions. “What is seeing that despite our different opinions there is togetherness?”

The conversation moved naturally into listening, safety and openness. Zeenat challenged the idea that dialogue necessarily needs to be a “safe space,” asking whether, if dialogue becomes too comfortable, it might simply become an echo chamber. Zeenat asked whether there is a type of listening that can create a sense of safety through listening to the whole of a person “going underneath the words.”

From there, participants examined disturbance, reaction and projection in everyday life. One participant described noticing how easily the mind can anticipate conflict and create a disturbance before anything has actually happened. The question: Where am I coming from when I share something? emerged as an invitation to look at whether our responses come from belief, opinion, fear, or projection. The discussion also touched on compassion and responsibility: Am I my brother’s keeper? If we feel compelled to help another, how do we know what action actually serves the situation?

The dialogue then expanded into questions of boundaries, conflict, and responsibility when opinions become actions that affect others. Zeenat referenced Krishnamurti and questioned whether right action can come from belief or opinion at all. Do we need to find the “right” belief in order to act rightly, or whether something more direct is possible when we see how thought, reaction and separation operate within ourselves?

Toward the end, the dialogue returned to aliveness, simplicity, vulnerability and courage. Participants explored whether it is possible to see a thought simply as a thought, without immediately engaging with it, and whether inquiry can remain light and playful rather than becoming another belief or practice.

The meeting ended in silence, leaving the questions open and alive. It was an engaging and thoughtful gathering, with the spirit of inquiry continuing beyond the meeting and participants looking forward to continuing the dialogue at the Thursday meeting in Victoria.

• Anastasia Shtamina

The group met at the Swanwick Centre. The question brought forward by the group for exploration was how one can engage in society during times when it feels like action is imperative. The group explored the subtle but critically important difference between striving and right action on the one hand and apathy and surrender on the other hand.

The group explored how striving may come from the desire to achieve a particular result, to change society according to a specific idea of what we believe it should be. As a result, striving often requires tremendous effort and can feel exhausting and depleting, sometimes leading to apathy. Apathy may arise when one feels that things are hopeless and itself may be a form of withdrawal born from fear, frustration, or resignation. Surrender on the other hand does not imply apathy or passivity. Nor does surrender necessarily imply approval or that one must tolerate injustice. It is simply seeing something exactly as it is without any resistance.

From the direct observation of seeing things as they are, right action is possible. Krishnamurti often emphasized that when we see something directly and clearly, the action that arises does not require the effort that comes from an idea of what we should do. The group ended with questioning whether we can remain attentive to discover what action is called for in each moment.  Can we engage with society in a manner that neither results in withdrawing from the world nor trying to impose our will upon it but rather responding intelligently and compassionately to what we actually observe?

• Zeenat Patel

“Freedom at the beginning, middle and end” 

We met at Esquimault Gorge Park Pavilion. We sat in a beautiful room with large windows overlooking the park with its beautiful flowers, trees and reflective ponds. A fine spot for a dialogue, and today the subject was a very popular one with the group: Freedom! Who doesn’t like to go into that.

It was mentioned that, as the title suggests, we are always in the midst of Freedom. It is our natural state, it is beaming through the opaque glass house we live in called the me. It shines through darkly. We translate that glow into our own useful definition of what freedom means to us as egos. Freedom to do what we want, political freedom, religious freedom—all of which serves to maintain the safest or happiest existence for the self, the me, the ego, the fragment.

Krishnamurti asserts otherwise. Freedom is not for the me but from the me. Of course.

In this freedom, passion, for example, is not fueled by thought, such as ‘I am passionate about this or that’, resulting in a pleasurable experience; rather, it is the pure expression of joy and ecstasy, free of the striving, demanding and struggle to maintain it. Passion in freedom has none of the demands because it already is. It does not have to be strived for or maintained; it is the essence of life. This passion does not exist for the me. This passion is freedom, a light not lit from the past.

A peculiar quote from Krishnamurti was shared regarding our access or lack thereof to this essence of life, this freedom:

Only when the mind is really free can you discern and find out what the hindrances are that impede freedom.

This quote was taken in by the group with great enjoyment. It is a bit of a koan, with so much to learn by letting it sink in past the logical mind. Starting with freedom, at the beginning!

Another clue from Krishnamurti on what action in our daily lives will ensure that this passion is burning and operating in us:

Nothing will ensure it except the attention of learning, which is action, which is now. In this there is the beauty of passion, which is the total abandonment of the “me” and its time.

The obvious question arose: what is this learning? What is this action, which is now? Well, it was shared that when consciousness is not fragmented by a me, then thought can arise freely in consciousness instead of being grabbed by the me and worked on, controlled, hidden away, or experienced. The controller is the controlled. Me is thought, and me doesn’t understand that; it thinks its job is to control thought to make it manageable, safe, pliable or hidden. All this is the dimension of a me that has no access to passion as we described it.

It will experience a moment in its time according to its judgement of the moment and how it is going, and how it can keep it going or stop it. Otherwise, thoughts are free to flow and flower in consciousness without being experienced by an experiencer. Hence, there is freedom in consciousness, with content or without. The only requisite is freedom from the self, the me, the controller.

‘Not two’, as many philosophies say: not me and my thoughts, not me and you, … ultimately, not me.

 

• John Duncan