Meditative Self-Inquiry with Oda Lindner, April 5, 2026
This was our first on-site meeting of the year and part of the Centre facility’s reopening after the winter season. We met on the grounds in front of the main house on a sunny, warm afternoon. Oda Lindner, who is joining us from Ontario for the month of April, was our facilitator.
We began simply — each sharing what draws us to these teachings. Then Oda invited us into a quiet attentiveness: to feel the body as it is, to notice the breath, the subtle restrictions, the aliveness in the hands and feet — and to let that awareness gently spread.
From there, the question emerged: What is meditation?
Many spoke of awareness — of watching reactions as they arise, of seeing conditioning in daily life. But then came a deeper turn: What is the problem of meditation? It was already there as a hint in the meaning of the word “to ponder”, “to measure”.
Gradually, we saw it — the meditator himself. The one who seeks, measures, evaluates, and hopes to become something. In that very movement, meditation is lost.
The dialogue unfolded into a shared insight: that meditation is not separate from life, and its flowering must be in the everyday — in relationship, in reaction, in the ordinary moments we often overlook.
There were questions about society, disorder, and what humanity may become. But again and again, we returned to the importance of not projecting the future and instead staying with the intensity of what is here and now.
Perhaps meditation begins when nothing is sought — when there is only a quiet, open observation of what is, without a goal.
And maybe that is where change truly begins.
- Anastasia Shtamina
