What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really?

[bananas]

http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2011/10/28/what-kind-of-buddhist-was-steve-jobs-really/

What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really?
By Steve Silberman
Posted: October 28, 2011

One reason I was looking forward to reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Steve Jobs was my hope that, as a sharp-eyed reporter, Isaacson would probe to the heart of what one of the few entrepreneurs who really deserved the term “visionary” learned from Buddhism.

By now, everyone knows the stories of how the future founder of Apple dropped acid, went to India on a quest for spiritual insight, met a laughing Hindu holy man who took a straight razor to his unkempt hair, and was married in a Zen ceremony to Laurene Powell in 1991. I was curious how Jobs’ 20-year friendship with the monk who performed his wedding — a wiry, swarthily handsome Japanese priest named Kobun Chino Otogawa — informed his ambitious vision for Apple, beyond his acquiring a lifetime supply of black, Zen-ish Issey Miyake turtlenecks.

Isaacson does a fine job of showing how Jobs’ engagement with Buddhism was more than just a lotus-scented footnote to a brilliant Silicon Valley career. As a young seeker in the ’70s, Jobs didn’t just dabble in Zen, appropriating its elliptical aesthetic as a kind of exotic cologne. He turns out to have been a serious, diligent practitioner who undertook lengthy meditation retreats at Tassajara — the first Zen monastery in America, located at the end of a twisting dirt road in the mountains above Carmel — spending weeks on end “facing the wall,” as Zen students say, to observe the activity of his own mind.

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One of the books that inspired Jobs to become interested in this process was Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama who led a group of monks over the Himalayas in the 1950s to escape the invading Chinese army. Isaacson doesn’t do much more with Trungpa than name-check the title of his book, but he was a fascinating and controversial figure in his own right. After being recognized as the reincarnation of a great lama as a boy, Trungpa fled his home country and went to the British Isles, eventually graduating from Oxford. He began teaching in the traditional style at a meditation center in Scotland, complete with maroon robes, a shaved head, and vows of celibacy and sobriety; one of his early students went on to become the chameleonic pop star David Bowie.

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The comments are interesting:

126 Responses to What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really?

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Bri says:
November 2, 2011 at 6:55 AM

What kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs? The American kind where we select and reject what doesn’t work. Ethics travel better than beliefs. Where’s Sakyamuni in all this? Most indigenous Buddhists don’t even meditate. Not saying meditation is bad, because in Zen it is important but not the core of Buddhism. Buddhism is far more intricate of a system than the reductionist version we like to think is Buddhism in America.

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Steve Silberman says:
November 2, 2011 at 7:36 AM

Buddhism has changed and adapted to the culture of every country where it has taken root (like jazz) — not just America. Yes, “most indigenous Buddhists don’t even meditate” — but teachers like Chogyam Trungpa (and countless others, both inside and outside America) saw that as a bug, not a feature. In SE Asia, for example, intensive meditation was reserved for monks. But even before Buddhism came to America, a movement to bring meditation to the average practitioner (in fact, specifically to lay people and businessmen like Jobs) was underway in Burma, known as the “Vipassana revolution.” See my in-depth profile of influential American teacher Jack Kornfield , founder of the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Meditation Center, for a deeper view of how the Vipassana revolution had a profound effect on the culture and practice of American Buddhism, with its emphasis on “mindfulness” that eventually became secular. I completely disagree that meditation is “not the core” of Buddhism in Zen communities. And I don’t really think that American Buddhism is particularly “reductionist.” Every culture picks and chooses from the vast ocean of practice and thought that is Buddhism. The American version, if you ask me, is notably vital and oriented toward practice rather than just talk.

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[no_hypocrisy]

1. Judging from his attitudes towards commune living, not much of one.

Jobs stayed at a commune for a little while during his youth and criticized how people would "steal food" from one another. He didn't see how food was community, belonging to nobody, belonging to everyone. It was meant to be shared. Seeing how this concept eluded him, I don't see how much of a Buddhist, no matter what the sect, he could have been.

[bananas]

2. Another great comment...

Robert says:
October 30, 2011 at 2:09 PM

I am extremely disappointed with your comments on Steve Job’s Buddhism. Buddhism is fundamentally, and above all, a path based on compassion for others. As you know, the Buddha’s motivation to leave the riches and struggle-free environ’s of his family and palace was to find the source and cure of suffering; and as you also know, I’m sure, his first teaching, on the four noble truths, were on the truth, pervasiveness, source and cure of suffering, all with the purpose of showing us how to alleviate suffering in ourselves, and more importantly, in others. Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, whom you reference, taught that taking refuge (formally becoming a Buddhist) committed one to two things: to abstain from harming others, and to cleaning up one’s own mess. The Bodhisattva vow which so many of us have taken is a commitment to give up our own freedom from cyclic existence until all sentient creatures–bugs and all–have been freed. Meditation and other practices have their value only to the extent that they increase our compassion for others and our ability to help relieve the suffering of others.

I know you know all this, and cite it primarily for those readers not so familiar with Buddhism.

So, with compassion for others and the motivation to help others being the heart and soul of Buddhism, I found it incomprehensible that you would all but ignore this in writing about Jobs. As far as one can tell from the written record, Jobs was Buddhist in name only: no concern for those who made his products, no concern for the happiness of those who worked for him, rarely listening to those around him or giving them credit for the contributions they surely made to his success, and, as far as we know, very little philanthropy either.

Staring at a wall for 20 years does not make one a practicing Buddhist, only a practicing meditator. As for all the space you gave to giving his Zen practice credit for developing his aesthetic and the extraordinary insights that led to his amazing products: pure speculation.

And as for the value of his contributions, I suggest you apply the Buddhist standard: In what way has his activity relieved the suffering of sentient beings? Not given them pleasure, but relieved their suffering.

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Steve Silberman says:
October 30, 2011 at 3:03 PM

Robert, I have to wonder if you read to the end, because your comment echoes the final section of my piece, where I talk about Steve’s denigration of others and his lack of humility, and provide a link to a news story about the working conditions in the factories in China where Apple products are made.

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[Lint Head]

3. A Billionaire Buddhist

[white_wolf]

4. A very bad one.

His actions didn't lead to the lessening of suffering, but to it's increase. He actively encouraged consumerism and taught people to seek meaning and happiness in his products. That seems to contradict the Buddha's teachings. I don't think the Buddha would have seen much use in people spending their time and money on Apple products, not when there is still so much suffering in the world.

[Silent3]

5. An iBuddhist?

With perhaps a bit more emphasis on the "i" than the lowercase would suggest?

I'm actually a fan of many Apple products, but the more I learn about Jobs as a person the more of an asshole it seems he was.

[Lucian]

6. He was a horseshit Buddhist.