Dearest Gangaji,

I am writing to thank you for the recent Hollyhock retreat. It was a beautiful to be surrounded by nature, by the glow of retreat participants, by you and the laughing Source that infused it all.

After decades on a spiritual journey it feels like I am at square one again. But this time around something feels different.

Twenty years ago I went looking for a teacher and instead found a Himalayan forest where I just sat quietly. Any practice I tried was mischievously interrupted by a strange silence shining from those mountains and the gently swaying pines.

Years later I see that it is the same silence I felt as a four year old: no story, no fear, no courage, not young, not old, not anything, and yet perfectly OK, perfectly matter-of-fact.

After all the experiences I’ve had at retreats, after all the longing for personal connection with you, I am back at the same simple silence I have experienced throughout my life.

But the beautiful difference this time around is that the silence is not contained in a towering ice-blue sacred mountain, or in an ageless toddler walking across the lawn: it is boundless, full.

It is Ramana’s gentle smile in every blade of grass, Papaji’s laugh in every passing car, your playfulness in every thought of separation, and I am nothing other than this.

I hope to see you in person again, but if I never do, as I sit here on my 44th birthday, I see I have the best, most sacred present ever. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the teaching that attracted me like honey five years ago. I am blessed.

With all Love,
Zubin