A Love Letter to the Universe.

Dear Universe (replaceable with god, nature, the Sun, the Brahman, the Tao, the Spirit or You) 

Image by PineForest

Namaste 🙏🏽. You cruel, heartless, unforgiving, cold, ruthless, capricious vile bitch of an enormous entity, I have never enjoyed this ride more than I am enjoying the ride now. Right now. 

The ride that I gladly call my humble life- fully embracing my joys and sorrows and everything else in between.

Looking back, it seems like I have been living several lifetimes in just one lifetime. 

Through my own doing or undoing I have cast myself into a multiverse of sorts, meeting several different individuals and groups of people, cementing deep and meaningful relationships over the span of seven years thus far. Though I’d like to think that I was conscious and complicit in my actions leading to the family break up, and my solitary life, I can’t help but to instinctively feel that a larger entity was in play, to have ordered this chaos that has launched me on a wild trajectory of cosmic proportions. And that was when I met you the cosmos aka the universe and began to see myself minus the veil of thought, shrouded in pain and suffering.

What a sight to behold the great nothingness. The formless. Eternal consciousness. You and I are one. 

I am a scion of the universe. 

I am eternal as the universe is. I am consciousness. I am formless. I am the divine. 

As formless as my source, I am made manifest in the form of an earthly being fully equipped with six levels of sense perception to fully explore and experience this world. Of Maya. Karma and Anava. Illusion, action and ignorance. 

Ignorance truly is bliss. For in our ignorance in executing our actions, in a world of illusions, we are meant to explore & experience anything, knowing that we will always be taken care of. No matter the outcome, it always works out in our favour. 

A thought now pops into my head, relating to the medicinal herbs startup I founded and recently shared it with a guest- “May we never know what evils or ills that could have befallen us had we had our desires fulfilled.” On the back of that thought, I know the outcome in the present moment is always favourable. It is always what it is. No matter how joyful or painful it is, it will pass-  It is not I, not me, not myself. 

I never fully experienced the joy of being truly happy deep inside, since I chanted this mantra given to me at the start of my spiritual journey towards the end of the last century. … 

“ I am healthy, happy and enjoying every moment of my life, may all beings be blessed with good health, prosperity & spirituality. In full faith so be it.”

 Now I do. 

To put my lifelong quest into words; I now know that I have been seeking spiritual wisdom. Not just wisdom as expounded by the ancient Greeks but spiritual wisdom espoused by the Hindus. 

Buddhism, the more scientific methodology of contemplation, of mind and being, has its roots in the deep history of Hinduism. So while my left brain is intellectualised and grounded by the daily practice of Buddhism, my right brain takes flight on the myths, stories and ideologies of Hindu lores called Sanatana dhamma, a way of life aimed at living a civilised life. Which is a way of ‘being’ as opposed to chasing and doing. 

Although already aware of the being state, I have never fully immersed myself in being, until now. To be fully centered in ‘being’ most of my waking hours brings clarity to the quality of life. 

To be fully conscious and connected to everyone and everything around me yet detached. Mindful of first taking care of oneself in thought, word and deed. To be slow to react, to be kind in words and deliberate in actions. 

It’s such a liberating feeling to be; immune to criticism, beneath or above no one and to fear nothing. 

Yet I still feel a deep yearning for my loved ones to give my life meaning and purpose and share in it. 

Right now I know that every one of us will have to sit alone in solitude in silence or in chaos to contemplate life, when the time comes. I pray it be better sooner than later, no matter what condition our lives are in. It is an irrefutable truth. One of life’s guaranteed path to enlightenment aka ending suffering. 

We are more in a state of fear than in a neutral state of mind, let alone being in a joyful state most of the time. When we sit in silent contemplation, we learn how to enjoy it coming full circle to be - 

- immune to criticism 

- beneath or above no one. 

- Fearless. 

And conduct oneself in a manner to be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves holding loving compassion in our hearts for all beings. 

What a great way to live.

Thank you, 

With Love,

SL Peter Gan

Amen. 🙏🏽 

I love you. Happy New Year.

A Holiday

Sunrise @BeachHut by PineForest

I left on the 2nd day of Xmas for my long awaited holiday (anticipated for several years) & returned on the 13th day of Xmas. 

I flew as far away as I could to the remotest, deserted islands within the region. I had a fabulous time every single day. Even the day I had a disagreement with a female trigger fish. I was snorkelling at a small island T, stumbled upon her lair and startled her. She attacked me, pursued and bit me on my left achilles heel. 

Perhaps the most significant experience of my entire trip was the meeting I had with myself. I had decided to book a last minute escape from party island to a quiet island to spend New Year's eve in silent retreat. It was the most basic, rustic, authentic beach hut on a near deserted beach save for chickens & cows. No air-con, no hot water, no attached bathroom, no sink for washing. Just a fan, a mosquito net, a comfortable large mattress with hard pillows in a sturdy wooden hut on concrete stilts. After almost a week of people and activities on party island, I was yearning for some quiet time with myself on a deserted island. I was ecstatic at the idea.

On the second night, I awoke suddenly like a scene from a horror movie at 3.38am feeling fearful of my surroundings. I immediately sat up on my mattress, drank some water and sat in silent contemplation in my hut conscious of the huge banana tree in front of my door. I needed to overcome the gripping fear of Mara looming outside my door. I recalled childhood horror tales related to banana trees bearing young fruits & female ghouls dressed in white. I was all alone with no one around me and nowhere to go. 

I took refuge in feeling what Siddhartha felt the night before his enlightenment when he sat to meditate against Mara's torments & temptations. He was under a bodhi tree and he finally succeeded. I was under coconut trees and succeeded too, two hours later Mara fled my life. I sat and meditated relentlessly and felt indescribable bliss at dawn. Despite the beach, the breeze and the waves, it was just the silent stillness that I felt.The stillness solidified into a thick immense cloud swathing me as I merged into it. 

Perhaps I remember this episode most of all is the fact that it was the only spiritual experience I could intellectually recall. 

The other intellectually exhilarating experience I can recall is the vibrant underwater life fringing the islands especially the remotest ones within reach by boat. The corals & underwater flora and fauna were tourist brochure worthy. While I am convinced that nature is very much alive & thriving, the threat of plastic pollution is real as sunset. It permeates every facet, phase and strata of human existence and excesses. Every morning, plastic debris of all shape and size wash ashore polluting the most pristine of beaches with waste excreted from the cluster of neighbouring islands. This is probably the biggest elephant in the room that the whole world is ignoring with apathy. I see native islanders themselves littering, children tossing candy wrappers as casually as pushing back hair from their sun-browned little faces. Plastic pollution, like most problems facing our world needs to be addressed from the grassroots by individuals not only government. The owner of my beach hut, Gun, a strapping islander who harbours ambitions of being a politician bent on improving the lives of his fellow islanders by mitigating the plastic menace. I wished him success as he, accompanied his wife and infant daughter transported me by boat to the main island and by car to my next destination.

I stayed on the main island for the rest of my holiday. Throughout, my trip was dotted with interesting meetings and connections with locals and individuals largely genuine. People and pets living in paradise and realising they do and those who wished they were somewhere else. I sat more with the former kind, shared stories and meals with them while nursing a swollen foot that seemed to have crept up on me exactly a week after the underwater altercation. 

Doctors and nurses from two nations could do nothing except prescribe a cocktail of antibiotics and pain killers for the swelling. I ditched both after 5 days of no visible results and hobbled along while observing the phenomenon on my foot for several weeks. I resigned myself to the fact that there is no known medication for trigger fish bites. Yet.

Best Friends in Paradise by PineForest

Best Video capture this year by PineForest

Sunset in Paradise by PineForest.

Happy New Year 2024.