Corporations and temples have a lot in common, believes Keisuke Matsumoto, a student at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad.

A participant in the PGP batch of 2010-11, Keisuke spent the last seven years as a Buddhist priest at the Komyoji Temple in Tokyo. He plans to use his MBA education to upgrade the way Buddhist temples work.

“The only thing that differs between a corporation and a temple is the objective. For corporations it is profit and for temples it is the happiness of its followers,” he says.

Keisuke is a graduate from the University of Tokyo, with an honours in Philosophy. Soon after his graduation, Keisuke like any other youngster started to evaluate the various options he had. “Joining the corporate world, becoming an academician and several other options were on my list. But I finally decided to devote myself to the Japanese tradition and philosophy,” Keisuke says.

“Like in India, the Japanese also have families that run temples for generation after generation. I do not belong to a temple family, but I found my inner calling and followed it. My family too supported me in this decision,” he says. Keisuke belongs to the Jodo Shinshu sect of Buddhism.

The journey from the university classrooms to the life that he had to lead to become a priest was tough for Keisuke.