5 Powerful Books On Zen Buddhism to Gain a New Perspective on Life
These texts are the stepping stones to a new philosophy.
“Focus was ingrained in Jobs’s personality and had been honed by his Zen training. He relentlessly filtered out what he considered distractions.” — Walter Isaacson on Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs was a master of focus. As a young man, he traveled to India in order to find wisdom. However, what really started his spiritual transformation is when he picked up a book.
The book that sparked his lifelong interest in Zen Buddhism is Shunryu Suzuki’s “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”. From that fateful moment, he was hooked, devouring countless Buddhist texts.
Inspired by the teachings, Jobs attended several of Suzuki’s lectures. The founder of Apple even found himself his own Zen master, Kobun Otogawa. It is this practice of Zen and meditation that is often credited as being the secret to Jobs’s ability to focus and approach things from a new perspective.
In a way, I started my own Zen journey just like Steve Jobs, by picking up a book. The first book on Zen I read was the same that blew Steve Jobs’s mind so many years ago.
