June 16, 2026

The Monastery and the Boardroom

The Monastery and the Boardroom I sat cross-legged on a cushion at 4:30 in the morning last month, watching my breath. By 9:00 that same morning, I was watchin...

The Monastery and the Boardroom

I sat cross-legged on a cushion at 4:30 in the morning last month, watching my breath. By 9:00 that same morning, I was watching a spreadsheet. Both required my full attention. Neither felt more real than the other, and that is what began to trouble me.

The Question I Keep Returning To

How did we come to believe that the sacred and the practical live in separate buildings?

I notice it in myself. When I meditate, some quiet voice whispers that this is the real work. When I close a deal, a different voice — louder, more confident — says the same thing about that. Both voices belong to me. Both, I suspect, are only half right.

I am not sure when the split happened. I only know I am the one carrying it.

Two Rooms in the Same House

There is a room in my life where people speak of surrender, non-attachment, and the dissolution of self. There is another room where people speak of quarterly targets, ownership, and building something that lasts. I walk between these rooms many times a day, and for a long time I assumed I was the only one noticing how strange this is.

Then I began asking others. A founder friend meditates before board meetings and does not tell his investors. A monk I met in Chiang Mai asked me thoughtful questions about compound interest. An Ayurvedic teacher I studied with drives a very nice car and does not apologize for it. Everyone, it seems, is quietly holding both.

Perhaps the split was never as real as I thought. Perhaps it was inherited.

I started looking at how different traditions actually handled this. What I found surprised me — the neat separation of "spiritual life" and "worldly life" is a fairly modern invention, and even then, mostly a Western one.

Tradition	The Householder	The Renunciate	How They Relate
Hindu (Ashrama)	Grihastha — the family stage, running a home, earning, raising children	Sannyasa — the final stage, letting go of possessions	Sequential. One becomes the other in time. Both are considered necessary.
Buddhist (Theravada)	Lay supporter — gives food, keeps precepts, works in the world	Bhikkhu — ordained, holds no money, depends on the lay community	Interdependent. Neither can exist without the other. The gift flows both ways.
Christian (Benedictine)	Ora et labora — pray and work	Monastic life still includes labor — bread, beer, manuscripts	The wall is thinner than we imagine. Work is prayer.
Zen	The layperson practices in the marketplace	The monk practices in the zendo	"Before enlightenment, chop wood. After enlightenment, chop wood."
Sufi	The merchant on the trade route	The dervish in the lodge	Rumi ran a school. Attar sold perfume. The path was walked in the market.

Looking at this, I wonder if the question I have been asking is the wrong one. I kept trying to figure out how to balance the monastery and the boardroom, as if they were opposite poles I had to hold apart. But every tradition I look at seems to suggest they were never separate to begin with. The renunciate depends on the merchant. The merchant depends on the renunciate. And most of the time, the same person plays both roles, just at different hours of the same day.

I think of the Vipassana centers I have sat in. Someone paid for the cushion. Someone built the hall. Someone cooked the dal. The silence I received was made possible by a great deal of unsilent activity. Was that activity less sacred than my sitting? I honestly do not know. It might have been more so.

And then I think of the boardroom. The decisions made there ripple outward — payroll paid, families fed, products used or discarded. Is that not also a kind of practice? A very difficult one, because there is no bell to ring when the session ends, and the object of attention keeps changing shape.

I am starting to suspect that the monastery was never a place. It was a quality of attention that some people chose to protect with walls, because attention is fragile and the world is loud. But the walls are optional. The attention is not.

If this is true — and I am only exploring, not concluding — then the boardroom does not have to be the enemy of the cushion. It might be its extension. Or its test. Or, on the difficult days, its teacher.

The Deeper Layer

There is something I have been avoiding saying, because it sounds too neat, and I distrust neatness in matters like this.

The split between monastery and boardroom might live entirely inside me. Out there in the world, there is only what happens next — an email, a breath, a conversation, a decision. The labels "spiritual" and "worldly" are added by the mind afterward, sorting experiences into categories that feel meaningful but may not actually correspond to anything real.

When I sit in meditation and my leg begins to hurt, the pain does not care that I am doing something sacred. When I sit in a difficult meeting and my chest tightens, the tightening does not care that I am doing something practical. The body is the same body. The awareness is the same awareness. Only the story changes.

I notice that on the days I meditate well, I run the company more clearly. And on the days I run the company with integrity, I sit more easily that evening. They feed each other, quietly, without asking permission. Maybe this is what the old traditions understood and what I keep having to relearn — that a life is not divided into holy hours and other hours. It is one continuous thing, and the divisions are drawn by a mind that would rather have categories than sit with what is actually happening.

I am still learning to trust this. Some days it feels obvious. Other days I run back to the cushion as if it were the only safe place. It is not. But I understand why I keep going.

What I Am Still Learning

I do not know if I am doing this well. Some weeks the monastery and the boardroom cooperate. Other weeks one seems to be stealing from the other, and I cannot tell which is the thief.

What I am learning, slowly, is that the question "which one is more real" was probably always the wrong question. Both are made of the same material — attention, breath, choice, consequence. Both can be entered with reverence or with distraction. Both will, eventually, be left behind.

I am a temporary guest in this body, in this role, in this decade. I do not need to resolve the tension between the two rooms. I only need to keep walking between them honestly, and to notice, when I can, that it might have been one room all along.

FAQ

Q: Do you meditate before important business decisions? A: Sometimes. Not as a strategy — more because when I do not, I notice I am reacting rather than responding. Whether that leads to better decisions, I honestly cannot say. It leads to decisions I can live with, which may or may not be the same thing.

Q: Isn't running a company inherently at odds with non-attachment? A: I used to think so. Now I am less sure. Attachment to outcomes causes suffering — that is true whether you are chasing enlightenment or revenue. Doing the work without clinging to the result seems possible in both rooms. I am not always good at it.

Q: How do you handle the ego required to lead? A: I try to remember that the ego is a tool, not the operator. It is useful in negotiations and useless in meditation. Knowing which is which, moment to moment, is most of the practice.

Q: What does Ayurveda have to do with the boardroom? A: More than I expected. Ayurveda taught me that different constitutions need different rhythms. I run my calendar differently now — not because a book told me to, but because I noticed my body kept telling me and I finally listened.

Q: Do your colleagues know you meditate? A: Some do. I do not lead with it. I would rather they notice a difference in how I show up than hear about my morning routine.

Q: Have you ever considered leaving business for a monastic life? A: I have considered it. I have not done it. I am not sure whether that is wisdom or avoidance. I am watching to find out.

Q: What would you say to someone caught between these two worlds? A: I would not say much. I would ask them what they notice when they are quiet. Whatever they answer is probably closer to the truth than anything I could offer.

Paweł Sokołowski is a CEO, Vipassana meditator, and student of Ayurveda and Thai massage. He writes from the intersection of technology, consciousness, and the ancient body.

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