All those who run away to ashrams, thinking they are doing something great are just performing daily chores th... — Tanushree Dutta

All those who run away to ashrams, thinking they are doing something great are just performing daily chores there - cooking, gardening etc. After all, the place has to be run.

Author: Tanushree Dutta

Insight: There's something quietly deflating about this observation, especially if you've ever fantasized about escaping your ordinary life for something more meaningful. We tend to imagine that spiritual seekers are doing something fundamentally different—meditating in profound stillness while the universe rearranges itself around them. But the truth is both humbler and more honest: someone still has to chop the vegetables, sweep the floors, and fix the roof when it leaks. The real insight here isn't cynical, though. It's actually liberating. It suggests that meaning isn't hiding somewhere else, waiting to be found once you abandon your current life. It's embedded in the work itself—the repetition, the care, the small acts of maintenance that keep any community alive. A garden at an ashram requires the same attention as one in your backyard. Cooking a meal for others is cooking a meal for others, whether it's in a monastery or an apartment. This cuts through a particularly modern fantasy: that enlightenment or fulfillment requires escape, that you need to change your location or status to become a better version of yourself. Sometimes the radical move is recognizing that the ordinary chores you're already doing—the work that keeps your life functioning—might already be the point.