A woman spent decades chasing enlightenment, from Tiruvannamalai to Rishikesh, and now cannot sleep because she has still not arrived. How is she different from a businessman sleepless over a missed profit target? Only the name of the prize has changed. Final enlightenment is the ego’s grandest title: it signs its own death certificate and stays to collect the credit. Moments of clarity are real; the finish line is the fantasy. If the ego has really become less, why must it announce it?
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Originally published in The Pioneer on 24 October '26
A woman once told me that she had spent decades seeking enlightenment. She had been living in India since 1989, spending time in Tiruvannamalai, Bodh Gaya and the Himalayas, visiting spiritual teachers and pursuing what she called the spiritual path. She remembered a period of peace and contentment that had come without effort. Then she began searching for that condition again, and the search itself became a source of suffering.
By the time we spoke, she was in Rishikesh, surrounded by spiritual teachers and programmes. Sometimes, she said, she could not sleep because she had still not reached. After so many years, she felt ashamed of her apparent failure. She even feared she was going backwards.
I asked her to consider a businessman who cannot sleep because his profits have not reached the desired target. He pursues more money, imagining that some future achievement will finally bring satisfaction. She had made an imagined spiritual condition her target and was suffering because she had not attained it. What was the difference in the underlying movement? One had made profit the measure of success; the other had made enlightenment the measure.
