Kobun & Steve Jobs

"Kobun Chino Otogawa met Steve Jobs for the first time when he had just come back from his trip to India. Their relationship lasted for more than 20 years until Otogawa died in 2002. Kobun Chino Otogawa was in charge of celebrating the wedding ceremony of Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell according to the Sōtō Zen ritual. Kobun was like a father to Steve; during the next year Steve offered him a job but Kobun just accepted to occupy an “Advisor” role. Kobun Chino Otogawa was the “Spiritual Advisor” of the company until it was acquired by Apple.

Otogawa was not your typical Buddhist priest. He refused to shave his head. He drank and spent prolifically and shacked up with a series of women. For Jobs this freewheeling disdain for convention (both in his teachings and in his personal life) was probably a big part of Otogawa’s appeal. Later, when Jobs was a wealthy man, he donated one of his houses to Otogawa and visited him there regularly. Unfortunately, there is no record of the questions and answers that passed between them. When Otogawa died in Switzerland at the age of 64, trying to save his drowning five-year-old daughter, Jobs was devastated.

Before founding Apple with Markkula and Wozniak, Steve Jobs had been considering what to do with the rest of his life, one of the options that he liked the most was to dedicate himself to Zen exclusively. In a key moment in his life, Kobun Chino Otogawa advised Steve to do the opposite, he told him to follow his heart (& start a technology company.)

Whatever you think of Steve Jobs (really bad manners even with friends), he did just that. In one of his last heart felt messages, he said, "Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Shortly before Otogawa’s death, a student asked, "Kobun, why do we sit?" He replied: We sit to make life meaningful. The significance of our life is not experienced in striving to create some perfect thing. We must simply start with accepting ourselves. Sitting brings us back to actually who and where we are. This can be very painful. Self-acceptance is the hardest thing to do. If we can’t accept ourselves, we are living in ignorance, this darkest night. We may still be awake, but we don’t know where we are. We cannot see. The mind has no light. Practice is this candle in our very darkest room.”

~ compilied from wikipedia & various sources which did not attribute authorship.

Photos ~ Kobun Chino Otogawa as zen priest and happily clapping after marrying Steve and Laurene.