We met at the Centre. The dialogue unfolded around the question: Is Krishnamurti’s understanding of love enough for a full human life and for deep, ongoing relationships?

The conversation began with the suggestion that love, as Krishnamurti describes it, is a quality of presence and attention – without comparison, desire, attachment, or wanting. But does it fully include the passionate wish for the well-being of another person, especially someone close to us? Could such care exist without becoming attachment or a transactional relationship?

The group considered several descriptions of love: awareness, attention, presence, and a state in which problems are resolved. One participant described love as something experienced directly, beyond words, while another suggested that awareness itself may be love. The possibility was raised that when we give complete attention – to another person, an animal, nature, or even an ordinary activity – the self may temporarily disappear. In that sense, attention itself could be an act of love.

The inquiry then moved toward preference and resistance. If we prefer peace to disturbance, pleasure to discomfort, or one experience to another, what happens when that preference becomes effort or striving? Trying to move from what is toward what we think should be creates conflict. The group asked whether love can exist in conflict, and whether the attempt to become loving is itself a form of separation. Rather than trying to change an experience, could we simply observe resistance, discomfort, or annoyance with complete attention?

The group also questioned the difference between love itself and an image or idea of love. Statements such as “we are love” can feel deeply meaningful, but they can also become conclusions that thought uses as a resting place. An insight or profound experience of love may later become only a memory if it is not alive in the present. The dialogue therefore returned repeatedly to the importance of seeing what thought does with every experience, including beautiful experiences of connection, insight, and love.

Finally, the discussion opened into the possibility that love cannot be defined or possessed. Perhaps living in love means remaining in the unknown rather than reaching a conclusion about what love is.

• Anastasia Shtamina

We met at Swanwick Centre. The dialogue opened with K’s quote:

“In the space which thought creates around itself there is no love.”

This immediately raised a fundamental question: what do we mean by love, and can thought contain or understand it? The group explored the possibility that what we ordinarily call love may be intertwined with desire, attachment, possession and the need for connection.

Several participants described love as something experienced rather than thought – a spaciousness, openness or feeling that appears when thought and its images fall away. Yet the dialogue repeatedly returned to the danger of turning such descriptions into new ideas about what love should be. If love becomes an answer, does inquiry stop? The group questioned whether we can remain with “I don’t know” rather than reaching for comforting explanations.

This led to an exploration of desire and the human search for comfort. We looked at how thought may create a sense of lack and then seek something – a relationship, an idea, security or even an imagined state of love – to fill it. Perhaps the more important question is not how to find love, but whether we can observe grasping, resistance, pain and the desire for comfort without immediately trying to change them.

A vivid example emerged in a story about a child’s laughter in a bookstore: for a moment there was an open, joyful awareness without direction or thought. Then memory entered, bringing expectations and disappointment. The group wondered whether this movement from direct experience into images of what should be might reveal something essential about our human predicament.

The dialogue also explored whether awareness itself might be what connects us, beyond the thoughts we exchange. Rather than defining love, perhaps dialogue allows us to observe thought and discover its limits. The session ended with an invitation to continue exploring concrete experiences of love in our next meeting.

P.s. To read the full quote, please visit: https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/part-1

• Anastasia Shtamina

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