Steve Jobs did not wear Zen like a marketing costume. He learned it as a practice from a real teacher—a Sōtō Zen monk named Kobun “Chino” Otogawa【弘文“知野”乙川】—who mentored him for many years and officiated Jobs’s wedding in Yosemite on March 18, 1991.
Who was Kobun Otogawa — and why “Chino” or “Otogawa”?
Kobun Otogawa (1938–2002) was born the third son of a Sōtō Zen temple called Jōkōji. As a child, after his father died of cancer, he was adopted by the Zen master Kōei Chino(孝英 知野) and used the surname Chino. Years later, the adoption ended, and Kobun reverted to his original surname, Otogawa. For this reason he is referred to in records as either “Chino” or “Otogawa.”
Why America
Kobun Otogawa’s journey to America was directly prompted by an invitation from Suzuki Shunryu(鈴木俊隆), a monk of the Soto Zen school.
Suzuki Shunryu was the figure who spread Zen in America and is regarded as the foremost pioneer of overseas missionary work within the Soto Zen school.
In 1960s America, within the counterculture (hippie culture), interest in Eastern philosophies, including Zen, was growing.
In 1967, Kobun, who had a strong desire to spread Buddhism overseas, was invited by Suzuki Shunryu, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and headed to America.
What awaited Kobun after arriving in America was a culture vastly different from the strict discipline of Zen practice. Confronted with the chaotic values of the counterculture, he temporarily cut off contact with the outside world and retreated to live in a mountain hut. Through this experience, he began exploring a path to convey Zen within the foreign culture of America, embarking on an unconventional way of life as the “wandering Kobun.”
Kobun and Steve Jobs: the first meeting
Kobun and Steve Jobs met in the 1970s at a small Zen center in Los Altos, California, where Kobun served as teacher. The place, called Haiku Zendo(俳句禅堂) was a converted garage near Jobs’s home. In his late teens, after dropping out of college and returning from India, Jobs was reading Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and was deeply drawn to Zen.
One night, Jobs visited Kobun. Jobs was intensely searching and felt something was missing. Kobun looked him in the eye and began a conversation. Jobs quickly grew devoted to Kobun, and a long teacher–student relationship began.
Community sources say Kobun later served as a spiritual advisor at NeXT, the company Jobs founded (formal corporate documentation is scarce). In 1991 he officiated Jobs’s wedding in a Zen style and continued to influence him in both public and private ways.
Many say the simplicity Kobun embodied—and his unconventional way of living—deeply influenced Jobs’s taste and design sense.
Zen is not everything at Apple
Some claim “Zen is everything at Apple,” but the reality is different. Jobs used Zen to build the “foundational strength” for his judgment and aesthetic sense. Factories, supply chains, and capital strategy were the result of efforts in other technical domains.
Some venerate him, saying “Jobs was always calm and saint-like,” but the reality was not so. He had a fiery temper and internal contradictions. However, he possessed the means to return to stillness at critical moments. “Jobs = devout daily zazen practitioner” is not accurate.
Regarding Kobun, while some respect him as an admirable person, many others criticize him as “loose with alcohol, money, and women, casually standing people up, and generally sloppy.”
Some say “the master gave him the answer,” but Otogawa gave him not an answer, but a “perspective.” Because Jobs was left room to choose for himself, their relationship endured.
The fact that his teacher attended his wedding ceremony at Yosemite, a pivotal moment in his life, speaks to the depth of their bond. Jobs’s “subtraction” wasn’t a product made for Zen. It was a method to reclaim human attention and focus solely on what was truly essential. Within it, the shadow of Otogawa Kobun remains, quietly and undeniably.
＊remarks
Haiku Zendo(俳句禅堂) set its capacity at seventeen people, in homage to the Japanese cultural form of haiku, which is composed of seventeen syllables.
“The content on ZenNow was originally written in Japanese and has been translated and edited with the assistance of AI for clarity.” With gratitude to Google.
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