{"id":1989,"date":"2011-11-02T06:42:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-02T05:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/2011\/11\/02\/que-tipo-de-budista-era-steve-jobs\/"},"modified":"2011-11-02T06:42:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-02T05:42:00","slug":"que-tipo-de-budista-era-steve-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/que-tipo-de-budista-era-steve-jobs\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00bfQu\u00e9 tipo de Budista era Steve Jobs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Una larga entrada de Steve Silberman en NeuroTribes<\/a>, que pienso que merece la pena.<\/p>\n

\u00abOne reason I was looking forward to reading Walter Isaacson\u2019s 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 \u201cvisionary\u201d learned from Buddhism.
…
Isaacson does a fine job of showing how Jobs\u2019 engagement with Buddhism was more than just a lotus-scented footnote to a brilliant Silicon Valley career. As a young seeker in the \u201970s, Jobs didn\u2019t 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 \u2014 the first Zen monastery in America, located at the end of a twisting dirt road in the mountains above Carmel \u2014 spending weeks on end \u201cfacing the wall,\u201d as Zen students say, to observe the activity of his own mind.
…
One of the books that inspired Jobs to become interested in this process was \u00abCutting Through Spiritual Materialism\u00bb by Ch\u00f6gyam Trungpa Rinpoche \u2026 one of his early students went on to become the chameleonic pop star David Bowie.
…
I suspect that one of the things that Jobs found inspiring about Trungpa\u2019s writing \u2014 beyond its bracingly direct tone and surgical deconstruction of the lies that prevent us from seeing things as they are \u2014 was his profound respect for artists, poets, and musicians, whom he saw as fellow warriors against delusion \u2026
Our attitude and integrity as artists are very important. We need to encourage and nourish the notion that we are not going to yield to the neurotic world. Inch by inch, step-by-step, our effort should wake people up through the world of art rather than please everyone and go along with the current.
…
Another influence on Apple\u2019s young founder was the book \u00abZen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind\u00bb by Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, the founding teacher of San Francisco Zen Center.
…
Swimming against the tide of Zen writings of its era, \u00abZen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind\u00bb downplayed the enticing concept of enlightenment in favor of slow, steady mindfulness practice \u201cwith no gaining idea\u201d \u2014 that is, with no hope that your next session on the cushion would bring about a shattering, life-changing flash of satori. \u2026 You didn\u2019t sit zazen to become a Buddha, Suzuki-roshi used to say: \u201cYou\u2019re perfect just as you are \u2014 and you could use a little improvement.\u201d
Jobs\u2019 celebrated motto for the original Mac team \u2014 \u201cthe journey is the reward\u201d \u2014 could have been lifted from the pages of Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind. For Suzuki-roshi, the path was the goal.
…
The only regrettable aspect of Isaacson\u2019s account is his clownish portrayal of Jobs\u2019 teacher and friend for two decades, Kobun Chino Otogawa, as a hapless bore who spoke in needlessly cryptic \u201chaiku.\u201d
…
Three years after the wedding, Kobun drowned in a shallow, icy pool at his student\u2019s home in Switzerland, trying to save the life of his 5-year-old daughter Maya, who perished anyway. I imagine the loss of his longtime spiritual friend was particularly rough on Apple\u2019s founder when he came face-to-face with his own mortality the following year, after his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
…
Kobun was similarly encouraging to young Jobs, telling him, in Isaacson\u2019s words, that he \u201ccould keep in touch with his spiritual side while running a business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another thing that becomes clear in Issacson\u2019s book is the crucial role of what Buddhists call mindfulness played in securing Apple\u2019s success. When a 15th century poet named Ikkyu was asked, \u201cWhat is the meaning of Zen?\u201d he replied, \u201cAttention.\u201d Asked to explain further, he replied, \u201cAttention means attention\u201d \u2014 one of those cryptic, haiku-like utterances that can make people think you\u2019re drunk. But attention, in Zen practice, means more than just being mindful of your breath in the zendo. It means investing moment-to-moment awareness in everything you do in the course of an ordinary day \u2014 whether running for the bus, cooking a pot of rice, talking to your in-laws, taking your blood-pressure pills, or making love.<\/b>
Or, say, crafting a totally new kind of computer \u201cfor the rest of us.\u201d
…
Like a Zen fussbudget, Jobs paid precise, meticulous, uncompromising attention to every aspect of the user experience of Apple\u2019s products \u2014 from the design of the fonts and icons in the operating system, to the metals used to cast the cases, to the colors on the boxes and in the magazine ads, to the rhyming proportions in the layout of Apple stores. He encouraged mindfulness in his customers too, by designing his computers so superbly that they faded into the background as creative imagination took over. \u2026
…
One of the most memorable lines in \u00abZen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind\u00bb is Suzuki-roshi\u2019s statement, \u201cIn the beginner\u2019s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert\u2019s mind there are few.\u201d
…<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Skeleton performing zazen on waves by Maruyama Okyo, 1787, Daijoji Temple, Hyogo, Japan.<\/p>\n

Isaacson is admirably frank about the core tenet of Buddhism that Jobs seems to have bypassed: the importance of treating everyone around you, even perceived enemies, with basic respect and lovingkindness<\/b>. It\u2019s tempting now to cast Jobs\u2019 tantrums, casual brutality, and constant berating of \u201cshitheads\u201d as the brave refusal to compromise his ideal of perfection \u2014 even as a kind of tough love that inspired his employees to transcend their own limitations. But a more skillful practitioner would have tried to find ways to bring out the genius in his employees without humiliating them \u2014 and certainly would have found ways of manufacturing products that didn\u2019t cause so much suffering for impoverished workers in other countries. The moment in Isaacson\u2019s book when Jobs tells the Mobile Me team after the project\u2019s disastrous d\u00e9but, \u201cYou should hate each other for having let each other down,\u201d shows that even near the end of his life, Jobs had more to learn from his teachers.
I suspect that the most powerful lesson Jobs took from his years with Kobun was to accept death as an inevitable part of life, which served him well when he learned that his own death was imminent.
\u2026 because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life\u2019s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. \u2026
…
I\u2019ve never forgotten something else Jobs told me that day: \u201cIf you want to know what I think, just look at our products.\u201d At the time, it seemed like a crabby, dismissive, \u201cbad Steve\u201d response. But it was the most Zen thing he could have said.\u00bb<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Una larga entrada de Steve Silberman en NeuroTribes, que pienso que merece la pena. \u00abOne reason I was looking forward to reading Walter Isaacson\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-filosofia","category-ideas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}