Steve Jobs

by Walter Isaacson

Zen Center, used to come to Los Altos every Wednesday evening to lecture and meditate with a small group of followers. After a while he asked his assistant, Kobun Chino Otogawa, to open a full-time center there. Jobs became a faithful follower, along with his occasional girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, and Daniel Kottke and Elizabeth Holmes. He also began to go by himself on retreats to the Tassajara Zen Center, a monastery near Carmel where Kobun also taught. Kottke found Kobun amusing. “His English was atrocious,” he recalled. “He would speak in a kind of haiku, with poetic, suggestive phrases. We would sit and listen to him, and half the time we had no idea what he was going on about. I took the whole thing as a kind of lighthearted interlude.” Holmes was more into the scene. “We would go to Kobun’s meditations, sit on zafu cushions, and he would sit on a dais,” she said. “We learned how to tune out distractions. It was a magical thing. One