Reflections from the Meditative Dialogue on June 8, 2025

The meeting began with a silent meditation with an invitation to bring compassionate, effortless attention to whatever arises within and without: thoughts, sensations, desires, sounds, and breath. Mukesh gave a short intro about the essence of this meditative self-inquiry emphasizing that it is not just an exchange of knowledge or ideas about the teachings but an open-ended exploration without any authority among deep friends on this pathless path with a sense of deep togetherness, listening, and the energy of the heart. He pointed out that we often approach life dominated by thought, which relies on past knowledge. The invitation here is to question thought’s dominance and sense whether a deeper energy — one not conditioned by the mind — can guide our exploration.

A recurring theme throughout the dialogue was the human tendency to seek security amidst life’s uncertainties. Participants shared personal struggles with anxiety, resistance, and the longing for permanence. One participant reflected on the resistance that arises in everyday interactions — from sharing space with a housemate to grappling with health uncertainties — and how these challenges reveal the mind’s deep-rooted desire for control.

Mukesh encouraged the group to see resistance not as something to eliminate, but as an opportunity to observe the mind’s tendency to argue with reality. This insight opens the door to choiceless awareness — an inner space that allows life’s flux and chaos without interference. He highlighted how genuine peace comes not from trying to change the mind but from letting go of interference and resting in awareness, which exists independently of the mind’s movements.

Another powerful thread of the dialogue was the exploration of separation — how thought continually creates division, fostering disorder and suffering. The group reflected on how this illusion of separation fuels self-centeredness, fear, and conflict at both personal and collective levels. The conversation circled around the root of this illusion, noting that the mind’s compulsion for security and permanency often drives it.  True freedom lies in realizing our deeper nature beyond these constructs, in the stillness of pure being.

Throughout the dialogue, participants shared their experiences of the challenges and insights that come with living in relationship, navigating chaos, and striving to embody awareness in daily life.

The meeting ended with an appreciation for the shared inquiry, the pauses, and the space of silence that had naturally emerged.

-Mukesh Gupta

Reflections from the Meditative Dialogue on June 1, 2025

The dialogue began with an invitation to enter a shared space of meditative self-inquiry, not from knowledge or intellect, but from presence, silence, and love. This set the tone for a gathering rooted in listening, mutual affection, and care.

Participants reflected on the nature of expression and the fear that often accompanies speaking. True communication, it was felt, comes not from compulsion or performance but from a stillness within. Sometimes, the most profound contribution is silence itself.

A key insight emerged around aspiration—that our natural longing for wholeness doesn’t need to be fabricated. Trusting the intelligence already moving within us brings a gentle, surrendering quality. Doing nothing was redefined—not as passivity, but as spacious openness where awareness itself can act. As Krishnamurti noted, “freedom is at the beginning,” not at the end of effort.

Deeper themes of shame and suffering were touched upon. One participant observed that healing arises not by battling thoughts, but by simply seeing them clearly. The seeing of the very first thought that triggers an emotional loop is transformative. Many echoed the insight that thought creates the “thinker,” and thus conflict arises from trying to control thought. In awareness, this division collapses.

Throughout the dialogue, curiosity and insight were seen as essential qualities. A physics metaphor likening awareness to the energy that frees an electron offered a compelling image: insight energizes the mind to move freely.

There was an invitation to welcome the gaps between thoughts—to taste the stillness that is often feared or ignored. Far from emptiness, this psychological “nothingness” revealed itself as a doorway to freedom and clarity. The group collectively realized that freedom doesn’t lie in solving all problems, but in stepping outside the field of thought, even momentarily.

The dialogue ended with a gentle reminder: awareness is an effortless state which is always ready to flower, buried beneath the movement of thought. When even a small gap appears, clarity and love naturally emerge. The tone shifted from complexity to simplicity, from effort to effortless seeing. What remained was not knowledge, but a quiet joy in being.

-Mukesh Gupta

Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Eric Hassett
May 21, 2025

On Wednesday, May 21st, from 4:30pm to 6pm, a dialogue with five participants and myself took place in a meeting room at Esquimalt Gorge Park, Victoria. Large windows offered views of the exquisite garden landscape outside.

A Krishnamurti quote from The Book of Life (A Timeless State, Oct. 2nd) was read:

When we are talking about time, we do not mean chronological time, time by the watch. That time exists, must exist. If you want to catch a bus, if you want to get to a train or meet an appointment tomorrow, you must have chronological time. But is there a tomorrow, psychologically, which is the time of the mind? Is there psychologically tomorrow, actually? Or is the tomorrow created by thought because thought sees the impossibility of change, directly, immediately, and invents this process of gradualness? I see for myself, as a human being, that it is terribly important to bring about a radical revolution in my way of life, thinking, feeling, and in my actions, and I say to myself, “I’ll take time over it; I’ll be different tomorrow, or in a month’s time.” That is the time we are talking about: the psychological structure of time, of tomorrow, or the future, and in that time we live. Time is the past, the present, and the future, not by the watch. I was, yesterday; yesterday operates through today and creates the future. That’s a fairly simple thing. I had an experience a year ago that left an imprint on my mind, and the present I translate according to that experience, knowledge, tradition, conditioning, and I create the tomorrow. I’m caught in this circle. This is what we call living; this is what we call time.

Thought, which is you, with all its memories, conditioning, ideas, hopes, despair, the utter loneliness of existence—all that is this time…And to understand a timeless state, when time has come to a stop, one must inquire whether the mind can be free totally of all experience, which is of time.

The group proceeded to discuss awareness, the observer and the observed, psychological time, conditioning, and the ending of the ‘me’. There seemed to be genuine ‘looking’ taking place, along with self-observation.

Eric

Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with James Tousignant
May 7, 2025

The meeting began with the Book of Life reading from May 7, 2025 titled, “One Must Have Great Feeling.” We quickly moved into an exploration of the Krishnamurti’s use of the word “feeling” as his statement:

because it is only the feelings that make the mind highly sensitive

This would have been interesting in and of itself, however the reading on the opposite page, described:

there is no feeling without thought

And feelings, thoughts, etc dissipate the energy needed to observe… to inquire. A seeming contradiction on the level of the ordinary meaning of the word is where we began. As we moved through our inquiry it became clear that an experience of ‘great feeling’, (brief moments where aliveness and clarity arise) and ‘observation without thought’ (where in the moment of observing our minds are stilled) provided the ground to embrace the apparent contradiction and move into a more expansive understanding of ‘feeling’.

James

Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Henry Fischer
April 30, 2025

On Wednesday six participants gathered for a KECC sponsored dialogue at the Esquimalt Gorge Park Pavilion in Victoria.

After a period of silence, it was suggested that dialogue may not be about our experience or our expertise but might require one to look at oneself as one has never looked before— not as an idea but as a fact (actuality).

It was suggested that absolutely everything we know or experience might not be love whatsoever. It may be only a memory already conditioned and judged by its utility to this self which is often describes as “me”. Is there a “me”? Why would one ask such a question like this? Does it have something to do with suffering and conflict? Surely in suffering and conflict me is always there. But the suffering is desired to end, and one doesn’t consider instead that perhaps the me could end. Is the “me” the root of this suffering? Does one need this “me” even though of course it continues to produce images and tell a story of what it thinks? Could this bring one to the precipice of being a true revolutionary…

The following Krishnamurti quote is a shortened excerpt from the August 6 entry in Book of Life by J. Krishnamurti:

The true revolutionary
Truth is not for those who are respectable, nor for those who desire self-extension, self- fulfillment. Truth is not for those who are seeking security, permanency; for the permanency they seek is merely the opposite of impermanency. Truth comes to him who is free of time, who is not using time as a means of self-extension. Time means memory of yesterday, memory of your family, of your race, of your particular

As the dialogue began to conclude the group asked questions about fear and attachment. There was a suggestion to bring this forward in May when the dialogues continues with a new facilitator.

Henry Fischer