"A meditation in love, this collection of photos titled 'A Love For No Reason' serves as a reminder of who we really are, under all the veils of the ego.


There is a love that I have known that doesn’t have a reason to it. I was sitting in the conservatory one September morning of 2019, in utter despair, in the darkest of darknesses due to personal circumstances, when out of nowhere I experienced the first beams of this divine, radiant warmth. There was an immense clarity - clarity about nothing at all, and yet clarity about every single aspect of existence. It felt like grace had touched me, this was a love without an object - a love that I had previously never known. This was love not as an act, not intended for someone or something, not as a feeling. This was love as a state of being. I WAS love, my environment WAS love, without any separation between the two. There wasn’t a physical space where I ended and my surroundings began, it was all one. The ego had melted away, all the veils had vanished. I understood much later that I had touched that place within myself - mystically, for I had not intended to do any such thing - that was pure light, pure love. I have read that the Hindu tradition calls this experience Brahman. Every act that you perform in this state comes from a place of purity, the separateness that we are so used to in our daily lives, dissolves, and there is no fear because there is no clinging to anything. You are not trapped by the boundaries of your mind. Whether you’re making tea, buying a ticket from the bus driver, having an exchange with someone you don’t agree with, watering a plant, watching your cat sleep, you acknowledge each moment as it is. There is no pushing, no pulling, there is just an is-ness, a spacious presence in which you allow each moment’s richness to unfold.


This ongoing collection of photos - at present mainly portraits, and going forward hopefully all encompassing - is not an illustration of what I’ve described, for it’s impossible to convey the essence of formlessness by trying to give it form, but is a gentle attempt at evoking feelings of such a love through photographs, through softness, through lightness, and through a warmth that will hopefully transmit to the viewer and create a ripple effect. Even writing about it feels a bit futile because it can’t be understood by the intellect, it can only be felt through an open heart, but presently, words and images are all we have.


There was no intellectual reason at all why I photographed Vijay, the young boy with the flowers, or the Flower Brothers, or the elderly lady in the sun. I just shared a fleeting love with these people, one that will live on and be passed on through me. Every being in these photos merely helped me reach that place within me that is pure light, just by virtue of being around them. They became the environment for me to grow in. In a way this practice is a lifelong meditation in love and the photos are just mementos, gentle reminders of who we really are under the veils of the ego - pure love.

It is a difficult practice because the mind always gets in the way. The ego says “Let me keep you safe.” Love says “You are free.” The ego says “I will love you if I can get this or that from you.” Love says “You are loved without condition or boundaries.” - a love for no reason."