The Search

探寻

Jobs’s interest in Eastern spirituality, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and the search for enlightenment was not merely the passing phase of a nineteen-year-old. Throughout his life he would seek to follow many of the basic precepts of Eastern religions, such as the emphasis on experiential praj?ā, wisdom or cognitive understanding that is intuitively experienced through concentration of the mind. Years later, sitting in his Palo Alto garden, he reflected on the lasting influence of his trip to India:

乔布斯对东方精神、印度教、佛教禅宗以及探寻个人启蒙的浓厚兴趣，并不仅仅是一个19岁青年的心血来潮。纵观他的一生，他追随并遵循着许多东方宗教的基本戒律，比如对“般若”的强调——通过精神的集中而直观体验到的智慧和认知。多年之后，乔布斯坐在自己位于帕洛奥图的花园中，回想起了印度之旅对他的深远影响：

Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.

我回到美国之后感受到的文化冲击，比我去印度时感受到的还要强烈。印度乡间的人与我们不同，我们运用思维，而他们运用直觉，他们的直觉比世界上其他地方的人要发达得多。直觉是非常强大的，在我看来比思维更加强大。直觉对我的工作有很大的影响。

Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not. That’s the power of intuition and experiential wisdom.

西方的理性思维并不是人类先夭就具有的，而是通过学习获得的，它是西方文明的一项伟大成就。而在印度的村子里，人们从未学习过理性思维。他们学习的是其他东西，在某些方面与理性思维同样有价值，那就是直观和经验智慧的力量。

Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it.

在印度的村庄待了7个月后再回到美国，我看到了西方世界的疯狂以及理性思维的局限，如果你坐下来静静观察，你会发现自己的心灵有多焦躁。如果你想平静下来，那情况只会更糟，但是时间久了之后总会平静下来，心里就会有空间让你聆听更加微妙的东西一一这时候你的直觉就开始发展，你看事情会更加透彻，也更能感受现实的环境。你的心灵逐渐平静下来，你的视界会极大地延伸。你能看到之前看不到的东西。这是一种修行，你必须不断练习。

Zen has been a deep influence in my life ever since. At one point I was thinking about going to Japan and trying to get into the Eihei-ji monastery, but my spiritual advisor urged me to stay here. He said there is nothing over there that isn’t here, and he was correct. I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if you are willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next door.

禅对我的生活一直有很深的影响。我曾经想过要去日本，到永平寺修行，但我的精神导师要我留在这儿。他说那里有的东西这里都有，他说得没错。我从禅中学到的真理就是，如果你愿意跋山涉水去见一个导师的话，往往你的身边就会出现一位。

Jobs did in fact find a teacher right in his own neighborhood. Shunryu Suzuki, who wrote Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and ran the San Francisco 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.

事实上，乔布斯确实在他洛斯阿尔托的家附近找到了一个导师。《禅者的初心》一书的作者铃木俊隆管理着旧金山禅宗中心，他每周三晚上会去那里开讲座，并和一小群追随者一起冥想。一段时间之后，乔布斯和其他人觉得不够，于是铃木让自己的助手乙川弘文（KobunChino）开办一家全天候开放的禅宗中心。乔布斯和女友克里斯安·布伦南，以及丹尼尔·科特基和伊丽莎白·霍姆斯都成了忠实的追随者。他还开始一个人去塔萨加拉禅宗中心（TassajamZenCenter）修行，这所寺庙靠近卡梅尔，是乙川弘文的另一处教学点。

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 evening we were meditating with Kobun when it was raining, and he taught us how to use ambient sounds to bring us back to focus on our meditation.”

科特基觉得乙川弘文很有趣。“他的英语非常糟糕，”他回忆说，“他说话就像是在吟诵俳句，话语极富启发性。我们就坐在那儿听他讲，有一半的时间我们根本不知道他在说什么。我把这个看做轻松的插曲。”他的女朋友霍姆斯则更加投入。“我们会去参加乙川弘文的冥想，我们坐在蒲团上，他坐在讲台上，”她说，“我们学会了怎样不理会外界的打扰。这是很神奇的一件事。有一天晚上，我们在和乙川弘文一起冥想，这时外面下起了雨，他就教我们怎样利用环境声音让自己集中注意力继续冥想。”

As for Jobs, his devotion was intense. “He became really serious and self-important and just generally unbearable,” according to Kottke. He began meeting with Kobun almost daily, and every few months they went on retreats together to meditate. “I ended up spending as much time as I could with him,” Jobs recalled. “He had a wife who was a nurse at Stanford and two kids. She worked the night shift, so I would go over and hang out with him in the evenings. She would get home about midnight and shoo me away.” They sometimes discussed whether Jobs should devote himself fully to spiritual pursuits, but Kobun counseled otherwise. He assured Jobs that he could keep in touch with his spiritual side while working in a business. The relationship turned out to be lasting and deep; seventeen years later Kobun would perform Jobs’s wedding ceremony.

而乔布斯的投入是全身心的。“他变得非常严肃，妄自尊大，让人难以忍受。”科特基说。乔布斯开始每天都和乙川弘文见面，每几个月都会一起静修、冥想。“与乙川弘文的碰面对我来说是一段意义非凡的经历，我后来尽可能多地与他待在一起，”乔布斯回忆说，“他有一个在斯坦福做护士的奏子，还有两个孩子。他妻子常常上晚班，所以我总是晚上去他们家找他。她一般会在午夜时分到家，然后把我赶走。”他们有时候会讨论，乔布斯是否应该完全投身到精神追求中，但乙川弘文不赞成这么做。他说乔布斯可以边工作边保持精神修行。他们两人的关系是深厚的，也是持久的：17年后，乙川弘文主持了乔布斯的婚礼。