🧘‍♂️ Why Did Steve Jobs Meditate? | Santa Clara Meditation

💡 The Secret Behind the Innovation: A Journey to Inner Completion

At Santa Clara Meditation, we often meet people who are seeking a deeper sense of purpose amidst their busy, demanding lives. It might surprise you to know that one of the most innovative and successful figures of the 21st century walked a very similar path. 🌿

Steve Jobs (1955~2011) was an icon of innovation who moved the 21st century. He was a master at integrating ideas, art, and technology to open up a new future.

• 🎶 The iPod transformed how we listen to and consume music.
• 📱 The iPhone turned the mobile phone into a device for music, photos, video, email, and the web.
• 🛒 The App Store created a new content creation industry.
• 💻 The iPad opened the door to tablet computing, providing a platform for digital newspapers, magazines, books, and videos.

Jobs didn’t just read what people wanted; he read what they would want, ushering in a new digital future and profoundly impacting our lives. It is said that this very symbol of cutting-edge technology practiced meditation. During the early days of Apple, even amidst his busy life, he would meditate at home for an hour before heading to work. ⏱️

Why did he meditate? What was he searching for through this practice? 💭

🧘 What Exactly is “Meditation”?

To briefly borrow an explanation from a psychology dictionary: escaping from mental anguish to return to a pure state of mind, free from any distortion, is called transcendence, and the effort to put this into practice is called meditation.

However, there are many types of meditation, and the methods vary accordingly. What Steve Jobs practiced was Eastern Zen (선). Zen is a Buddhist practice; it refers to the mental concentration used to calm the mind, unify the spirit, and reach a state of enlightenment.

💔 “Why was I abandoned by my biological parents?”

Discovering he was adopted led to spiritual wandering, and later, a deeper pursuit of spirituality and enlightenment.

Born in 1955, Jobs was raised in San Francisco by his adoptive parents, Paul and Clara Jobs. With a sensitive personality, Jobs agonized over his identity around the age of sixteen. His spiritual wandering deepened after discovering that he had been abandoned by his biological parents and adopted.

During Jobs’ youth in the 1960s, San Francisco was the epicenter of hippie and Zen culture. ✌️ Zen Buddhism was gaining traction among progressive intellectuals and young people. Wandering in search of his identity, Jobs naturally immersed himself in the hippie spirit and culture.

After entering college in 1972, he devoured books on spirituality and enlightenment. He even set up a meditation room decorated with Indian paintings, candles, incense, and meditation cushions, where he meditated with his friends. 🕯️ Steve Jobs believed that there was something beyond the everyday reality we see, and he strove to find that “something.”

“He had a hole in his heart, and he was trying to fill it.” — Daniel Kottke, College Friend

🕉️ “I want to attain enlightenment to know who I am”

Beginning formal Zen practice after a 7-month pilgrimage to India.

In 1974, Jobs dropped out of college and embarked on a 7-month pilgrimage to India. ✈️ This trip wasn’t just for show; it was a sincere effort to attain enlightenment. Jobs later reflected that at the time, he was “constantly obsessed with the idea that I needed to attain enlightenment to figure out who I was and how I should fit in.”

After returning from his journey to India, he officially began Zen practice at the Los Altos Zen Center. There, he met Kobun Chino, a Zen master who would become his spiritual mentor in life. From then on, Jobs immersed himself deeply in Zen practice, and it became a part of his life. 🌱

His interest in Eastern philosophy, Zen Buddhism, and enlightenment was not a fleeting, youthful rebellion. He embraced it with his characteristic intensity, spending the rest of his life striving to put many of the fundamental concepts of Eastern philosophy into practice, ultimately rooting them deep within his character. Years later, he reflected on the impact his Indian pilgrimage had on his life:

“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things. That’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. This is a discipline of the mind, and it is something that must be continuously practiced. Zen Buddhism has been a deep influence in my life ever since.” — From Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

✨ “I want to embed the spirit beyond what is visible into the products”

Achieving dazzling external success through a journey toward inner completion.

“Let’s make a dent in the universe. Let’s make something truly great and shake up the universe!” 🌌

Jobs said this when launching the computer development project called “Lisa.” His “universe” speeches continued during the Macintosh project that followed: “We are here to leave a mark on the universe.”

Experiencing that the universe and oneself are connected—seeing that they are not two, but one—is called Zen. The mindset of realizing connection with other beings, and creating not just for oneself but for a greater self (including others), begins with this enlightenment. 🤝 Through Zen practice, Jobs gained this insight, and his life’s ultimate goal was never merely profit.

“My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation for all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me.” ❤️

He wanted to build the best so that everyone could grow through better things, and he wanted to contribute something to humanity through new creations. He considered himself an artist and believed that great artists and great engineers were similar kinds of people—both sharing a desire to express themselves. He wanted engineers to embed not just technology, but the spirit beyond what is visible, into their products. 🎨

“People who have used the Macintosh really love it. You don’t often hear people say they love a product, do you? But there is something truly wonderful inside the Macintosh. So I don’t think the brightest people who worked with me did this just because they wanted to do computer work. They did it because the computer was a medium. It was the best medium to express their feelings. Feelings they wanted to share with other people.” — 1995 Interview, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (2012)

Jobs believed the reason Apple resonates with people is because “a deep humanity flows” through their innovation. And at the core of that deep humanity was insight gained through meditation. 👁️

Insight simply means looking “in” at the “sight”—it is a gift given to those who earnestly look within themselves. His devotion to the meditation practice was an inner journey to find fundamental wisdom experienced intuitively through mental focus: asking who he was and how he should live. His dazzling external achievements were born out of this journey toward inner completion. 🌟

If you are ready to embark on your own journey toward inner completion and discover the profound benefits of a focused mind, we invite you to start your practice with us at Santa Clara Meditation. 💚

📚 Reference Materials:

Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson | Translated by Ahn Jin-hwan | Minumsa)

Steve Jobs iMIND (Kim Beom-jin | Ideal Media)

Insanely Simple (Ken Segall | Translated by Kim Gwang-su | Munhakdongne)