What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs?
blogs.plos.org
blogs.plos.org
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.
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".
> 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.
I don't find "Zen monasteries in America" anything but a novelty, much less those "lengthy meditation retreats".
Buddhism owes its continued existence to the fact that similar opinions were never taken too seriously.
The "Californian kind of Buddhist" of today probably knows more about Buddhism than the average layman Buddhist did 1000 years ago.
It should also be remembered that part of Buddhism's historic success is exactly due to it's flexibility and lack of dogma. There is no school of Buddhisms that has monopoly on what it means to be Buddhist: it has evolved differently in every place it appeared in, and the practices of the Buddhist community have changed drastically throughout time.
Could you please post the link ?
A few meanings I think are possible, I like the explanation that the observers were wrong to assume they knew where the target was ; It was after all his shot to take, he wasn't conforming to the expectation of the group.
Reminds me of "A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to".
A good example is the story "A Cup of Tea": [1]
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a
university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on
pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain
himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and
speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"
To me the ultimate purpose of this is to get people to see the flashes of blue sky that the article talks about, those moments of insight that help us see through the useful illusions we collect as a way of getting by in the world.
[1] From http://www.101zenstories.com/index.php?story=1 and I'd encourage interested parties to buy Paul Reps's "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones", a delightful book of similar and related material.
[2] You might also find a useful analogy in the Native American notion of a sacred clown, a heyoka: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyoka
In that sense, Steve Jobs was about as Buddhist as the "prosperity gospel" people are Christian.
Richard Stallman was correct that the death of Steve Jobs was a good thing.
Who is not on your list of people whose death would be good?
Well, I'm as much an Apple fun as everyone, but: he was a ruthless businessman, leader of the one of the biggest companies (if not the biggest in market cap) in the world. If you think even for a momement that that is compatible with not being MORE materialist than the "average human", then I don't know what to say.
In fact, his whole life he placed extreme emphasis if not in money itself (which is not the be all end all of materialism), to material items. He devoted his life into building and selling material things.
In the process, he exploited cheap labor (when you have the highest profit margins and the largest cash stash in the industry, relying on cheap chinese works in 19th century conditions and not increasing their pay IS the very definition of exploitation), backstabbed those he could (Woz for one), and treated his averaged employee like "a means to an end" instead as people (from the programmers, who got the better treatment, but still were underpaid and forbidden to work for rival companies with secret deals, to the tons of industry and retail employees).
Richard Stallman isn't about freedom. In fact, the GNU is the opposite. True freedom means I give you my software and you can do whatever you want with it. Even if this means closing my changes to the world. The original software is not touched and is still free to be used under the GNU license. The BSD license is true freedom.
Instead, we have a license that most companies have to expunge from their code base because if you are even calling a function within code that is open sourced, your software must also be open sourced.
Stallman himself has said that he would prefer that open source get mandated by law and used in every organization. He loves all of the places that have had horrific human rights violations for decades and sees no problem with forced "freedom"..as long as it's his thoughts and beliefs that are being forced onto the people.
I'm so glad he is quickly becoming irrelevant.
"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.
Those 'slaves' probably wouldn't even be able to feed their families without companies like Apple. If you want to blame someone for the terrible conditions in those countries, blame the corrupt government. I never see the government take the blame..when they have the ultimate power. Why is that?
Also, you don't need a new one every year. I've had the same iPhone for 3 years and it works just fine.
"So I'm free to force other to do want I want?"
----
Freedom must be protected and preserved, is not something that naturally happen.
Apart from that I'm rather flabbergasted by the continuous fawning over people like Jobs. The man was a sociopath - a type often found in CxO roles for some reason - and not someone worthy of devotion. Study, maybe, to find a way to either cure these people or keep them from positions of influence, but not devotion.
I've seen a critique of Job's "Buddhism" discussed quite a bit, but it's important to consider that the soteriology of Buddhism and Christianity is radically different.
A major difference is the time scale and way with which salvation occurs. Christianity focuses on the realization that Christ is the savior, and appropriate adjustment in behavior in a single life time. Buddhism on the other hand is a progress in realizing the dharma over many lifetimes of effort.
Paul's conversion happens instantly on the road to Damascus, his change in action is immediate. The salvation of a bodhisattva occurs over the progress of many lifetimes effort, each new lifetime being shaped by the actions and desires of the old.
The point being that the binary saved/damned dichotomy used for judgement in Christian theology (ie X is a bad Christian) doesn't make any sense in a Buddhist context. A "bad buddhist" makes no sense as each person is simply working out the consequences of past actions during each successive lifetime until the dharma is finally realized. (edit: just a note that this 'progress' itself is a massive over simplification itself)
Certainly the above description of Buddhism has nothing at all to do with Soto or Rinzai Zen traditions, which emphasize this life moment as opposed to some later time when one's house will at last be in order.
I am not familiar with other forms of Buddhism (not even Zen beyond the tip of the iceburg), but if we go with the extant teachings (particularly in the Diamond Sutra) Buddha negates self, negates reincarnation, and negates awakening.
He didn't leave us much to work with O_o
It's hard to see how being a capitalist overlord is compatible with any reasonable definition of "right livelihood," which is part of the Eightfold Path.
Zen is criticized by other Buddhists for its lack of emphasis on ethics. It's hard to see how being a samurai is compatible with "right action," either.
I don't think the question of who is or isn't "really" Buddhist is very interesting. I just think it's annoying to act like Steve Jobs is a good example of anything spiritual because he made pretty things at great cost to other people's lives, the planet, human decency, etc.
"what kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs?" A dead one.
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"
Jesus was a pretty good buddhist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_years_of_Jesus#Claims_of_...
Obviously none of it has stuck, with big chunks being acknowledged fabrications. People generally want Jesus to have visited various places important to them which is why the poem that the hymn Jerusalem is based on talks about Jesus walking in Englands green and pleasant land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_%28hymn%29
I do think that the teachings of Buddha to do with nonattachment to material possessions fit very well with the teachings of Jesus.
Nobody's death is a good thing. Or a bad thing. It's just inevitable. (This is from TFA)
This is rather dishonest of, you isn't it? The above description applies to almost all electronics. Apple does more than any other major device maker to encourage better working conditions and wages in the Chinese factories that build their devices.
You can read details here: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/
Before death, there's always a chance for people to learn. After, not so much.
Further, although Apple's approach to business is not particularly compassionate, I would have a hard time saying that they are worse than their competitors. Indeed, I think they're better in their focus on making something excellent. That's not everything I'd want, but I think it's better for all concerned than the usual corporate half-assery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannon_Do_Zen_Meditation_Center
KD has newbie instruction every Weds eve, and a sitting group every weekday at noon handy for people working nearby.