If you give your life as a prayer, you intensify the prayer beyond all measure. To attain inner peace you must actually give your life, not just your possessions. When you at last give your life bringing into alignment your beliefs and the way you live, then, and only then, can you begin to find inner peace.
A hermit must have a deep experience of communion with humanity. Without this, you cannot be a hermit, because you would only be lonely. You would not be really solitary. To be alone and cut off from others would make you very unhappy, but to be alone, and to be deeply united with others, in deep communion, that is a possibility for which many people long. That is what I call solitude—over and against loneliness.