What is Life? (Chapter 20)
What is your anchor in life?
What is it that you do not miss a single day?
For many people, the anchor appears to be a person. In reality, it is a routine attached to that person. It is an activity, like a repetitive ritual. The person is merely the focal point. They may be at the periphery, while the ritual is the true center.
Let me tell you my secret. Reading and writing have always been my anchor. I did this even when I convinced myself otherwise. In 2022, due to health reasons, I decided there would be no more writing. For the next three years, the laptop battery died from lack of charge. Yet in 2025, I synced my Google Keep notes with Obsidian. I found 1,200 notes with annotations, comments, and links. There was material for two or three books. It had all happened inadvertently on cellphone. So much for my conscious awareness.
Writing and reading turned out to be my indispensable ritual. So I plunged back into it. This website is the culmination of that discovery.
Every person has an anchor in life. Most do not realize it. It is recognized when pushed to its limits, as in my case. Or it is seen when a person is abruptly deprived of it.
Ritualistic Activity
Politicians anchor themselves to money, family, or personal ambition. For some, it is the legacy they obsess over leaving behind. Business tycoons anchor themselves to the next luxury yacht. Others chase an expanding map across countries and continents. It is not merely the ambition, which we discussed in Chapter 4. It is the relentless activity surrounding it. That activity fills the void we examined in Chapter 19.
A person engrossed in an activity forgets about possessions. The activity takes over life. The activity becomes the anchor. Activity is living life, at least most of the time.
Look at the religious devotee. Millions go to a temple, church, mosque, or weekly satsang. It is the exact same ritual repeated every day or week. They offer lofty explanations: peace of mind, spiritual merit, or satisfaction. Stripped of pious vocabulary, peace lies in the anchor of the activity.
This may offend conventional sensibilities. Yet visiting a temple daily is structurally like visiting a social club. It resembles going to a bar, a card room, or a park bench. A casino or bar carries adverse economic and health costs. Lighting incense in a temple appears benign, and often is. Yet the underlying psychological engine remains identical. It is a familiar ritual that absorbs us completely. It gives the restless mind a predictable track to run on. It saves us from facing the frightening silence of unstructured time.
Gurus have their own frantic activity. They manage followers, maintain ashrams, and protect their image. They cannot pause. A pause feels like an empty void. Inactivity looks like an abyss. Yet they spend their lives telling others how to live.
Recently, a famous living guru underwent emergency brain surgery in New Delhi. His blood pressure spiked dangerously. Surgeons drilled into his skull to relieve the pressure. The medical diagnosis was a subdural hematoma. After recovering, he joked that doctors found his skull completely empty.
The joke was a lie.
His head was packed with too much ambition and activity. The biological vessel could take no more. It collapsed under the weight of non-stop performance. He failed to practice his own teachings on inner stillness. There is nothing wrong with the teachings. The guru, too, must live by them. No one is exempt from the laws of biology.
The Workaholics
We see this every day with workaholics. People spend decades dreaming of retirement. Yet upon leaving their jobs, they feel a quiet panic. They cannot sit at home. Within months, they restart a business or take part-time work.
When asked why, their answer is telling: "I have nothing else to do."
Their work was never merely a livelihood. It was their life ritual. Without that anchor, they do not know how to exist. The activity shields them from the stillness of an empty room.
The Danger of Dropping the Shield
A crime thriller once repeated an ancient truth. The hardest task for a man is to sit quietly in a room and do nothing. With practice, one can accomplish that stillness.
Yet spiritual teachers conceal a dangerous reality. If you stop using the mind, it loses its edge. The mind undergoes an unwelcome metamorphosis. It forgets its cunning tricks and social antennae. It drops the psychological defenses needed in a harsh world.
Achieving what gurus preach is exceptionally dangerous. Drop your mind, and you will not become a revered sage. You will be swindled out of your property. Relatives will send you to a destitute home or mental asylum. That is the cold truth.
Notice that gurus never drop their own cunning. They keep corporate lawyers, accountants, and security teams razor-sharp.
An old folk saying offers practical wisdom:
"कुछ न कुछ करते रहा करो; कुछ नहीं तो पुरानी रज़ाई उधेड़ कर फिर से सिला करो।"
(Keep doing something. If nothing else, unpick an old quilt and stitch it back.)
The ancients understood what philosophers forgot. Activity is not just an escape from the void. It is protective armor. It keeps the mind calibrated and functional in society.
The Walls of the Prison
This explains why people search for a guru. They dislike their current prison: their routine, boredom, and domestic friction. They pack their bags looking for freedom. Yet they merely land in another prison called an ashram. They swap an old cage for a newly painted one. Realization comes when novelty wears off.
The mind itself is our prison. We cannot escape it. You cannot dig a tunnel out of your own skull.
I know the walls of my prison better than my own hand. I know its corners and its limitations.
Sanity does not lie in buying a passport to an imaginary heaven. It does not lie in rattling the bars. Sanity means recognizing the room for what it is. Drop the futile struggle to escape. Learn to live within the walls peacefully.
Enjoying the walls of prison is enjoying the life.
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