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Steve Jobs, Zen, Chogyam Trungpa, and the Mind that Produced the iPhone
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A list of Steve Jobs' favorite books and most influential reads was just published on Huffington Post, and it includes Shunryu Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. It is an interesting endeavor to try to get into the mind of a creative genius, especially when that genius apparently had a pretty deep contemplative practice.
Having read both Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism many times, what interests me is that both of these texts focus heavily on ultimate truth, or emptiness, and repeatedly direct the student to release fixations on any relative outcomes. It is interesting to think of this ultimate type of letting go of thought as it relates to the process of a creative entrepreneur. What does shunyata have to do with the specs of the first Apple computer or the design of the iPad? What does an awareness of the dangers of spiritual materialism have to do with the successful and sexy marketing campaign that made iTunes such a force in the music industry?
I am constantly interested both by the minds of the juggernauts of our age, as well as how those minds related to themselves and their own creative process. It is not really surprising that Jobs was a practitioner, and it's beautiful to see what books influenced him. Of course, as Apple has a bad reputation environmentally, you have to wish that Jobs read a bit more on the dangers of planned and perceived obsolescence of his products, but his reading list was an impressive one to say the least.
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Comments
TO BE...YOU YOURSELF
Buddhism encourages you TO BE what YOU ARE... completely...everyday.
steve jobs
pobody's nerfect
plus
he kinda missed the boat on material materialism. he was worth $7 billion as of sept. 2011, according to forbes. he may have given money anonymously, but he still had 7 billion dollars and status as an iconic innovator.
I tend to think that if you gave away everything after the first billion, you probably wouldn't miss it. or give away the interest on the extra $6 billion.
yeah, maybe the compassion thing didn't quite stick.
It's really related to Zen/Buddhism?
Someone is not a completely Buddhist Practitioner if s/he is attached to "processing his/own ideas/patents" or attached to "being a CEO". The creation of gadgets could also "cut both ways." http://goo.gl/IjIZ0 (see Page 3)
Steve Jobs' practice
Yes, he could be a Buddhist Practitioner and "be" where ever he happened to be at in the practice, as every one of us has seemingly inconsistent issues we are working on and are only able to "be where we're at" in our practice. It can't and won't be or "look" perfect to you or me or even him, and that's actually the point of the practice. The bad AND good, dark AND light, strengths AND weaknesses... he and all of us practice with all of it.
He simply had a practice and not one of us can assume or judge what or how he was doing it, or whether it was real or right, because - as a practitioner, he was only able to do the best he could given his circumstances (regardless of money). That's all ANY of us can do.
overgernalization
I agree with the point that none of us can judge how SJ was doing practice. However, none of us can conclude or over-generalize that he was a Buddhist Practitioner simply based on three Buddhist books that he read. The over-generalization might reflect one's ego-based pride induced by adoring SJ.