In the summer of 2025, I spent a week completely off the grid, living inside a Buddhist monastery.
I spent time with monastic monks, sitting inside a rhythm of life built around silence, discipline, and deliberate slowness. Days were structured not around productivity, but around presence. Meals taken mindfully, conversations that left long pauses untouched, work done without urgency or applause. What struck me most wasn’t how different their lives looked from mine, but how calmly they moved through discomfort without trying to escape it.
There was no performance of enlightenment, no pressure to convince…just practice.
Being there forced me to confront how addicted I am to noise, momentum, and explanation, and how rarely I allow myself to simply be where I am. It wasn’t a lesson delivered in words. It was one lived quietly, moment by moment.
The entire documentary episode will be on my YouTube channel soon, but until then, you see a walkthrough of the days I was there.