Inquiry with Vala Legan, September 6, 2026

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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