Apple’s Steve Jobs the Buddhist
Dear friends,
I have recently read up more and more on quotes and thoughts from Steve Jobs. To me they sounded very Buddhist. Whatever he was saying had a powerful logical and spiritual tone to it. And now I see why. He is a Buddhist. His thoughts and philosophies for work and life come from Buddhism. He doesn’t practice Buddhism intensely in a ritualistic manner, but he tries to live his life a Buddhist and with correct attitudes and actions. I think that is such a good example in a world where truth of life, existence and our situations are so badly needed. Like many Buddhists, they apply Buddha’s teachings into their lives but they don’t ‘practice’ on an outward level obviously or sometimes seemingly not deeply. You have those who do and those who don’t, but everyone has their own way. Buddha’s message can be applied many ways. Again that is subjective I would say what kind of Buddhist we wish to be. After all, who can see who is really practicing on the inside. Outside rituals are not necessarily the yardstick to assume deep practice by. Whatever it is, you can see Buddhism pervaded the work and philosophy in the life of Steve Jobs.
I discovered Steve Jobs too late. I have only recently known more of him and understood his journey, works, spirituality and passion. He is very inspiring. I love his philosophy towards life so much. I wanted to share this article which I found to present another powerful side of Steve Jobs that formed his life and work which is his spirituality. I like this article… and I share it here.
Through this we understand Steve Jobs better and perhaps in the process ourselves also.
Tsem Rinpoche
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
Long before Steve Jobs became the CEO of Apple and one of the most recognizable figures on the planet, he took a unconventional route to find himself — a spiritual journey that influenced every step of an unconventional career.
Jobs, who died Wednesday at the age of 56 of pancreatic cancer, was the biological child of two unmarried academics who only consented to signing the papers if the adoptive parents sent him to college.
His adoptive parents sent a young Jobs off to Reed College, an expensive liberal arts school in Oregon, but he dropped out and went to India in the 1973 in search of enlightenment.
Jobs and his college friend Daniel Kottke, who later worked for him at Apple, visited Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram. He returned home to California a Buddhist, complete with a shaved head and traditional Indian clothing and a philosophy that may have shaped much of his corporate values.
Later, he was often seen walking barefoot in his trademark blue jeans around the office and reportedly often said that those around him didn’t fully understand his way of thinking.
“I wouldn’t say Steve Jobs was a practicing Buddhist,” said Robert Thurman, a professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University, who met Jobs and his “Tibetan buddies” in the 1980s in San Francisco.
“But he was just as creative and generous and went outside the box in the way that he looked to Eastern mental discipline and the Zen vision, which is a compelling one.”
“He was a real explorer and very much to be mourned and too young at 56,” said Thurman. “We will remember the design simplicity of his products. That simplicity is a Zen idea.”
Thurman met Jobs in San Francisco in the 1980s with Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and actor Richard Gere. The discussion was about Tibet.
“It was before the Dalai Lama, and he was very sympathetic and had advice for the Tibetans,” he said. “But he was into his own thing and didn’t become a major player.”
Jobs used Dalai Lama in one of Apple’s most famous ad campaigns: “Think Different.”
“He put them up all over Hong Kong,” Thurman said of the computer ads. “But then the Chinese communists squawked very violently and as my son says, ‘He had to think again.’”
Zen Buddhist monk Kobun Chino Otogawa married Jobs and his now widow, Laurene Powell, in 1991.
Jobs could have just as easily taken his philosophy from the hippie movement of the 1960s. The Whole Earth Catalogue was his bible, with founder Stewart Brand’s cry, “We are as gods.”
The catalogue offered an integrated and complex world view with a leftist political calling. Jobs later adopted the catalogue’s mantra: “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
Buddhism a Wake-Up Call for Steve Jobs?
The catalogue also delved into spirituality. In one 1974 article, author Rick Fields wrote that Buddhism is “a tool, like an alarm-clock for waking up.”
That may have been the case for Jobs. He said in his now-famous 2005 Commencement speech at Stanford that he lived each day as if it were his last, admonishing graduates not to “live someone else’s life.”
“Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking,” Jobs said. “Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
In that speech he told students to relish the time to follow their passions, recounting the time after he dropped out, but continued to audit non-credit classes like calligraphy. The elegant typefaces — serif and sans serif — were later introduced for the first time in the Macintosh.
“I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple,” he said. “I loved it.”
Jobs was also influenced by Richard Baker, who was head of the Zen Center in San Francisco from 1971 until 1984, when Baker resigned after a scandalous affair with a wife of one of the center’s benefactors. But Baker helped the center grow to one of the most successful in the United States.
Jobs was receptive to Baker’s message of change, “helping the environment and empowering the individual.”
Jobs admitted to experimenting with the hallucinogenic drug LSD, which he has said was “one of the two or three most important things” in his life.
In an unauthorized biography by Alan Deutschman, a college friend said that Jobs had even been a lover of folk singer Joan Baez, who was 41 at the time, and the attraction was largely because she had also been intimate with another ’60s icon, Bob Dylan.
He was a fan of the Beatles, who also embraced spirituality and made a similar pilgrimage to India. Jobs told television’s “60 Minutes” he modeled his own business after the rock group.
“They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other,” he said. “And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.”
Jobs said that “focus and simplicity” were the foundation of Apple’s ethic.
“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple,” he told Businessweek in 1998. “But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
Even the minimalist design of his products — from the first Macintosh to the sleek iPad have a “aesthetic simplicity and keenness of line” that smacks of Japanese Zen, according to Columbia’s Thurman.
Former Pepsico President John Sculley, who eventually fired Jobs, said walking into Jobs’ apartment had the same design feel.
“I remember going into Steve’s house, and he had almost no furniture in it,” Sculley said in a 2010 interview with Businessweek.”He just had a picture of Einstein, whom he admired greatly, and he had a Tiffany lamp and a chair and a bed. He just didn’t believe in having lots of things around, but he was incredibly careful in what he selected.”
Jobs reportedly convinced Sculley to work for Apple when he asked, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”
Jobs Gave People Computer Power
Thurman contends Jobs’ greatest success was not necessarily financial.
“It was his initial role in making the PC available to individuals to give them computer power,” said Thurman. “He was democratizing computer power. It was his own inspiration of things and not accepting the status quo and breaking through the power of the people.”
Though Jobs may not have been a devout practitioner of Buddhism, his personal and corporate vision certainly struck the same tone — “wisdom and compassion,” he said.
“Zen vision is that human beings can understand reality if they focus their mind on it and develop wisdom,” said Thurman. “When you do, you have the greater capacity to arrange the nature of things and to help people.”
But the irony of Jobs’ spirituality was that as much as it reflected the most beautiful aspects of the products he made, those very “machines” have in some ways enslaved a generation of users, according to John Lardas Modern, a professor of religious studies at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania.
Jobs made computers and hand held devices that have allowed people to become “disembodied” on a certain level — “to escape and transcend the mundane reality of bodily existence,” according to Modern.
Such spirituality begs for freedom from the trappings of tradition, he said, but they have a down side.
“These machines are amazing,” said Modern. “For the last 12 hours, I have been seeing people on Facebook and Twitter in praise of how the devices he made allow ease and convenience and empowerment.”
“I love my iPad, precisely because it feels like an extension of my mind and I can’t live without it,” said Modern. “The irony is, these products ground us in a chair behind a desk, behind a computer and in a sense they have pushed us inward and you don’t have physical connections with others.”
“It cuts both ways,” he said.
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/steve-jobs-buddhism-guided-life-mantra-focus-simplicity/story?id=14682458
The Japanese Zen Teacher who married Steve to his wife back in 1991. They had a Zen Buddhist ceremony.
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Steven Paul Jobs was an American entrepreneur, businessman, inventor of apple and holding a number of CEO post.A trip to India in 1974 changed Steve Jobs’ life in what he do and thoughts more in Zen Buddhism.Even though he was not a ‘devout’ Buddhist as claimed by some but he lives his life as one and stayed with him for the rest of his life.All his beautiful qoutes were more related to Buddhism.I loved and enjoyed most of his quotes.He choosed to be vegetarian after been diagnosed pancreatic cancer in 2003 and died 2011 at the age of 56.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this inspiring post .
(Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.)….by Steve Jobs….
Steve Jobs is definitely one of the remarkable man on this planet, he has accommodate Buddhist teachings into his daily life, using Buddhist teaching to create a better life being it in his personal life or working place.
This is one of the quote from Steve I like the most: “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”
Material wealth is good to have, but it will not bring happiness to our life, when we died, everything we own will be left behind, only what we did stays, we can create something beneficial that benefit people before and after we died. Steve didn’t focus on making loads of money, but when he goes along the way, he made his fortune.
Interesting how this man has incorporated Buddhism in to his way of life and his “products”. Wow I certainly did not know this. Does the world even realise that they are using a Buddhist “product”? Probably not one would have ever thought of that.
What is amazing about Steve is that he lived his “dream” and made them in to “realities” and shared it with the world. His life an product was a reflection of his understanding in Zen Buddhism and I think that is very creative of him and it also shows his conviction in Buddhism. And I’m sure Buddhism has been an influenced and inspiration for him so much so that he would apply it in his life and business acumen which challenges himself to always think beyond the box. Isn’t it interesting and funny, that the “computer” the world loves, from it’s design to it’s functionality is created on “Buddhist” principles? 🙂
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Steve Jobs brought Buddhism in a whole new aspect in this modern life, who would have known the very iMac, Ipod, Iphone and iPad that we uses is actually of Buddhism element. Steve Job touch everyone with the products he invented,infusing with Dharma in his life and career which makes Apple and himself stand out, who would have known each of his speech during every launch, and his speech at Standford was full of Dharma wisdom.
Thank You Rinpoche for such a wonderful blog post.
Steve Jobs will always be remembered for his contributions to the IT world. I’ve watched the way he launched his products. He was very good at “selling” his inventions. I hope his Buddhist background and spirituality had helped him in his final days.
A Cutting Edge Visionary – Steve Jobs
Taking it all from a deep place within to a new level without – for the world to grow – so inspiring!
He walked the dharma.
Thank you for this post.
I like what he said: simple is harder than complex. Since young we had been given complex informations. Our mind is always doubt, thinking of how to get things from others, thinking of how to make the next million, some people even using lives to exchange what they want. We are fortunate to meet dharma in order for us to have chance to realized what we actually need – may be a simple mind.
Living is Dharma , Dharma is Living. Live a life full of Dharma Lessons and we will always be on the right path. That’s how i felt and practice.
What impresses me most about Steve Jobs are what the U.S. President has lamented about Steve Jobs in his passing, that ” Steve Jobs was among the greatest of innovators, brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the World, and talented enough to do it”. As contented by Thurman, even the minimalist design of his products – from the first macintosh to the sleek ipad have a “aesthetic simplicity and keeness of line” as that of Japanese Zen. Though Steve Jobs may not have been a devout practitioner of Buddhism, but his personal and corporate vision certainly struck the same tone as that of “wisdom and compassion”. Apple definetly have gone through great difficulties, challenges, competitions and real hard work to have made it to what and where they are today. Perhaps as a true Buddhist, Steve Jobs was of the realisation of the aspect of impermanence of life when he was reported to have said, ” I have said if ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apples CEO, I would be the first to let you know”. How unfortunate that day came too soon for Steve Jobs! Om mani padmi hum.
In this age of Internet, we can be informed and inspired by people who lived on the other sides of the world where information and news travel to our own Apples and PCs within hours and minutes. The death of Steve Jobs shows an outpouring of feelings from the public, many strangers to him. While we can mourn and saddened by his passing, what would happen when it is our time? Would there be such reaction towards us as well? Steve Jobs reminds us to have faith with ourselves and firm in our resolves to achieve in life.
Dear Rinpoche, Steve Jobs is very inspiring in anyways. The quotes from him is very powerful and meaningful. When i read his quotes, somehow i found it familiar,he speaks like Rinpoche, very Buddhism as he has the wisdom of saying all these words,now i know he is a Buddhist 🙂 Is a pity the world had lost him,he may be away but he will always be remembered. He lived his life full and no regrets, he benefits the world with his creativity. I truly admired him.
Thank you Rinpoche for the post. We shall now all think differently 🙂
I find this impressive in Steve Jobs:
His ability to conceive clearly of a vision and make it come to reality even more clearer.
And I think this is what people like in Apple products: they are easy to look at, they are easy to use, they are free of complicated stuff that others use to attract buyers. Apple conceives something and sells the concept carried into reality by an object, they don’t take an existing object and try to make it attractive.
Steve Jobs is an inventor.
I did not know he was a buddhist, but it comes at no surprise, a person as he is with the ability to conceive in such a way must have an affinity with meditation, and even single-pointed meditation.
Dear Rinpoche,
In this few day, everytime when i driving on the road, i listen then the DJ will tell us the Quoted from Steve Jobs.
He badly want to learn dharma! He put dhamar in his life and benefit people!
虽然相逢恨晚，但是他所做的一切都给了我们方向！ 伟大 Steve Jobs 又证明了，信奉佛教，可以让我们更进步！
谢谢Rinpoche与身边的网络部门！
After all 1st April wasn’t a fooling day but a day where one of the finest creation has arise. Something that no one knew would be a reality Mac,ipad,iphone,ipod was one of the kind of invention i love because of its simplicity and innovations
This post inspire me not just about how Steve make his dreams comes through and how his inventions makes people life better, but most importantly understanding how Buddhist ideology can be blend into the modern technology. Through this post I lost my way, but I found a new inspirations of my life. Steve Jobs passion and love for his works is something I should apply in my design work because I do hope one fine day my work will inspire others and most importantly benefits others.
Thank You Rinpoche for reminding me to be a better person.
I love this statement from Steve Jobs – Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple,” he told Businessweek in 1998. “But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” If we keep our minds simple and clean, our practice will be so much easier. As a newbie, i am guilty of not doing this, i tend to clutter my mind about whether i am doing the rituals correctly when most important of all is understanding, contemplating the stanzas in the prayers and visualisation, i have a long way to go. The unfortunate aspect of having used the iPad or any of the Apple devices means we get “enslaved” that we dont know how to communicate properly anymore. Notice the people at cafes, restaurants – they dont talk, they are all too busy with their iPad, etc. I dont think this is what Steve Jobs have wanted either.
Much as this article does try to introduce the spiritual aspect of Steve Jobs, I don’t think it does him justice. It doesn’t hold a candle to the 2005 commencement speech which I think summed up so much of all Buddhist teachings in just the three clear points he made. It is trivial and trite to talk only about the external zen influences of Jobs’ work – the design of the computers etc. More than that is his extremely powerful focus and passion throughout his life and his tremendous tenacity to push through even when the end loomed over him so many times over so many years.
When the news broke about Jobs’ passing away, it was a sad day not just for the world of technology (which he has completely changed) but for the world at large. Though I’d never even met him and had only begun to find out more about him in very recent years, the world still feels a little emptier when we know that someone with as much passion, drive, commitment and tenacity is no longer here.
He certainly thought differently and this is the most defining, impressive aspect of Jobs for me – that he DARED to think differently. So many of us are scared of what is different or new. Instead, throughout his life Jobs championed courage and risks. He thought different, but it was closer to the truth than any of the most conventional ways of thinking are. We need only listen and read his commencement address again to see this – his meditations on death for example, were certainly “different”. Most of the world would balk at what would seem such a morbid meditation to think of each day as our last – but this is in fact what freed him. It is exactly the kind of truth that is revealed in every religion.
Thank you Mr. Jobs for showing us how being different can be so very liberating. Thank you for showing us that celebrating differences – as you did throughout your life – can bring happiness not only to ourselves but to millions and unite people from societies and worlds that are polar opposites. Rest in peace.
“Don’t be trapped by dogma.”
But nobody thinks they’re trapped. We think our dogma is obviously true–after all, we received it from Jesus / L. Ron Hubbard / Je Tsongkhapa. Besides, the whole group believes it. You want to stay a part of the group, don’t you?
Dogma provides a framework where you can build your thoughts on. When you can stand on your own you dont need it. They’re like training wheels to developing our minds.
yes i do want to be part of the group because i need support. we are social beings and we need the support of others to grow. if you dont, more power to you 🙂
Please be respectful to yourself and others on Rinpoche’s blog i hope thats not too much to ask 🙂
Once again, Buddhism has been proven that it can be in anywhere in any form, and this time is by the man behind the popular iPhone and iPad. I like the simplicity of i-products, which is very direct and useful, just as how Buddhism benefits our life.
Thanks Rinpoche for the article as I didn’t realize our so called “modern” live, is also surrounded by Buddhism without we aware about it.
The dots do connect later on as Steve Jobs says.
My father started me on Macs at age 7’ish. I used them my whole life regardless if people hated them or not, even as a Computer Science major. People did hate them, it was another subculture thing to pick on, for most. It was NOT NORMAL at all. Now in my 20s they are required for my profession — what are the chances?
I feel extremely fortunate to have early contact with such subcultural and creative things/beings.
Steve Jobs was brilliant and every decision he made I did not like at all: discarding floppy drives, creating iPod, creating iPhone, creating iPad. Obviously my perception was narrow and his mind great. Then later getting into dharma I look up his history because it seems so relevant, and he’s definitely Buddhist.
How lucky I get indirect Buddhist influence from Steve Jobs early on, and appreciate it at the time, and now I can move into dharma a little more comfortably when the time came?
Here is a picture of Steve Jobs meditating in an empty apartment in the ’80s:
http://thechoiceeffect.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/062b.jpg
He is an amazing man, right up til death, I hope I will be as composed when my time comes. Giving to the world, what better practice is there?
And look what he has given to the masses, what will be the result of making peoples lives easier, communication easier, and with zen style to boot. This is a matter of perspective, but his footprint he left in the Apple legacy is surely a higher motivation than most corporate heads in the world today.
Thank you Steve, may you take a good rebirth.
Thank you Rinpoche.
Steve Jobs reminds me to execute the Dharma practices from inside out.
Hey Kin Hoe,
Nice to see you sharing do share more, you never know when your insights can help more and more people. Everyone’s got a market even a ‘fatboy’ like me. My sister calls me a fatboy lol.
I love that phrase ‘“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” I first heard in on the ground of the Bangkok Ladrang, how Rinpoche read it to us was pure amazing. I’d like to keep that spirit in me always.
I loved that Steve Jobs was a trailblazer and a leader, I think everyone admires someone who could live according to their own inner voice, lived the life the way they wanted it to be. Kind of reminds of Sinatra’s song “i did it my way’.
For one, Steve Jobs did not have to chose between spiritual practice and secular life; he applied Buddhism in real life for the benefit of others by marrying his passion with technology. How exemplary of a true Buddhist practisioner? For others who are struggling to chose between one or the other, Steve Jobs have demonstrated that it is not a question of choice (secular or spiritual) but that Buddha has given us the Dharma to lead our lives. The two are not mutually exclusive but inclusive.
Some people may not be doing a lot of rituals, yet the Dharma is within them. Some people may not have learnt Dharma, but the way they lived their life, it is so much more Dharmic than me. It is time to contemplate on my seriousness of my Dharma practice…
I like the “Think Different” ads so much. This is actually the 1st time I see this ads. And it is such daring act to “provoke” the China government 😛
Love Steve Jobs. I admire the way this person lived his life the ways he believed in and in control of his choices. Maybe that’s the best way to live, so that when the last moment come, one could say “I have done all I can, stayed tru to my believe, and can leave the world without regret.” I wish to do the same.