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Steve Jobs’ Indian Travel Adventure
When you hear the name "Steve Jobs", what do you picture? The most famous visual image of him (and probably the one most common in people's minds) is the man in the black turtleneck and jeans up on stage at Apple's special events, introducing revolutionary devices that sent people into a buying frenzy. Or maybe you think of him in terms of his inventions themselves or the world-straddling company they helped to build.
Chances are you don't think of Steve Jobs as a Zen Buddhist or a Hindu seeker of truth. Indeed, popular depictions in the wake of his death tend to focus exclusively on his role as a businessman. It is undeniable that Steve Jobs was influenced by both Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, however, and that journey began with his first trip to India as a young man.
It was the spring of 1974. Jobs was still just a 19-year-old college dropout working as a technician at Atari. He had been planning and saving for a trip to India since 1973, inspired by his reading of the classic yogic manual Be Here Now by Ram Dass. Jobs planned to follow what was called "The Hippie Trail" at that time, seeking prajna (understanding and wisdom) from the world-famous guru Maharaj-ji. Part of that long delay was due to the process of obtaining an Indian travel visa, something that can be done entirely online today as Indian visa online thanks in part to Jobs and his innovations!
Unfortunately, he arrived a few months too late to meet the guru. Maharaj-ji had passed on by the time Jobs reached his ashram. Jobs was undeterred in his quest for enlightenment, however. He would instead travel to the nearby ashram of Bhole Baba, and in total spent seven months in India, much of the latter part of the trip spent traveling to Delhi and throughout the regions of Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh to get a broad experience of Indian culture and philosophy.
Of course, Steve Jobs would not keep the shaved head and traditional Indian dress that he returned from India with throughout his life, but he clearly held on to the experience and the philosophy. At this point he became a practitioner of Zen Buddhism, a spiritual fixture he would return to throughout the rest of his life. His 1991 marriage was conducted as a Zen ceremony, and he was a regular at the Tassaraja monastery in Carmel where he would spend as much as a week at a time engaged in deep meditation. Zen principles can even be seen in the design of his products and the layout of Apple stores! It's not too much of a stretch to suggest that Zen teachings represent a big part of why Apple focused so much on simplifying complicated computing experiences for the end user.
This interlude in India clearly influenced Jobs not just in his personal outlook, but in his product design as well. With hundreds of millions of people using his products, that influence rippled out to touch much of the rest of the world.
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