I'm pretty shocked that Jobs sat at Tassajara, that place is no joke, retreats are 3 months long, and the initiate phase for new comers, 5 days of sitting without moving (short of bathroom breaks) is pretty insane.<p>That must have been pre-Apple explosion, back when he was involved there likely wouldn't have even been a phone line, much less electricity. Tassajara is way out in the mountains of Carmel valley, literally a few miles from the closest humans.
The Californian kind of Buddhist.<p>That is: "I heard about this oriental religion in the sixties and I'll adopt it because it is currently perceived as cooler than my own. I won't follow much of what it preaches, nor study it with any seriousness of course, but it's nice to have a cool pseudo-spiritual thing to lean to while living a hardly spiritual life in a hardly spiritual environment".
Fascinating insight into a bit of Jobs life that is mostly overlooked, except as a "He used to be a hippy" anecdote. Steve Silberman does a good job of teasing out the bits and assembling a better vision of Jobs's belief system, and how it informed his work at Apple and NeXT
Can someone please explain to me this part "The spectators were aghast until they looked up at Kobun, who gleefully shouted, “Bullseye!”? I have a hard time understanding why Kobun did what he did.
Jobs pursued spirituality with the same zest as he pursued art and technology. He was neither a great artist nor a great engineer. Or was he? In the same way, he was not a great buddhist.
Buddhism stresses compassion and identifies desire and the ego as the causes of suffering. Steve Jobs was, you could say, "interpersonally abrasive" and made a fortune by encouraging people to want devices built using slave labor from raw materials whose extraction harms people living nearby. You need a new one every year, too.<p>In that sense, Steve Jobs was about as Buddhist as the "prosperity gospel" people are Christian.<p>Richard Stallman was correct that the death of Steve Jobs was a good thing.
Silicon Valley people - interested in learning more?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannon_Do_Zen_Meditation_Center" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannon_Do_Zen_Meditation_Center</a><p>KD has newbie instruction every Weds eve, and a sitting group every weekday at noon handy for people working nearby.