The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs (15 page)

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One day in the late afternoon, toward the end of Laura’s and my stay, I walked into the kitchen to discover that a new wave of visitors had arrived. Among them was a woman with her four-year-old daughter. The two stood center stage on the kitchen floor with about ten people surrounding them, including me. The little girl was wearing a long dress and sandals. Her mother was dressed in long hippie skirt with a pretty blouse and flip-flops. She was a confident tree of goodness, standing tall and firm next to her little one. Everyone was talking, as women do, pouring praise and greetings onto them. Someone said the child was born in the month of May and was a Taurus.
Oh,
I thought dreamily,
a little Taurus!
I was very taken by the child because she had such a powerful soul-light around her. Without thinking, and in a complete wonder, I floated a new thought:
I want a little girl like this one, a little Taurus!
I knew the woman was a single parent, but in this one moment even that looked good to me. So fast and full did the wish fly through me, so at-one was I with my dream that I didn’t fully understand that I was engaged in an act of creation.

Years later other women—at least three that I know of—would look at my child and would also decide to have one like her. All had been taken by Lisa as I had been by that child at All One Farm and all went on to have daughters of their own. Incredibly, each one sought me out after the fact, to proudly tell me, as if from a hushed secret society, “I now have a daughter and she is like Lisa.” Tipping their heads forward, they would smile, clear-eyed and glowing with pride as if to say what couldn’t be said, “My daughter is also like
her.
”

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I wept when Laura and I left the farm at the end of the week. It felt like home to me in a way that nothing ever had. It wasn’t just about Steve because he was way too ouchy to be around without others to dilute the hurt with laughter and kindness. It was the farm and the life at All One itself that I loved. There was some rare, incomparable nutrient that had saturated my being in that place, a quality that, as Rumi says, “your whole life yearns for.” Getting up at dawn to meditate, the rich gold feeling deep in the bone of focused work with others, and yet so much more on the side of the ineffable. Maybe it was Neem Karoli Baba’s influence, because it sure seemed like someone with that kind of love over-lit the place. Steve used to frame things as being greater than the sum of their parts, and this described All One. I wanted to stay forever and ever. Nothing in me could hide the depth and purity of the sorrow I felt about leaving. I had a commitment to drive on with Laura but I stood outside the car door and cried. Next lifetime, though, I’m staying.

All One Farm was a wisdom society when we were all still so young and foolish. It was a spiritual community working to turn a profit. A sanctuary. It was the time and place where Apple got its name and where I first had the yearning for my chirpy, happy, soulful daughter.

TEN

THE PRACTICAL AND THE POETIC

I have always had the odd talent of being able to find the very best books, films, and clothing; to walk into a store and locate the one item I want without having to shop, sort, or compare. It’s the perfect sense of the true find. That’s what happened in the spring of ’75 when I came upon a restaurant in downtown Los Altos, called Pan’s. I was charmed by this little place, by the way the front door was set back from the street in a little alcove. And so I went in.

A man in his mid-thirties with a shaved head stood behind the counter preparing food. His body was slightly stocky, and he had a large chest and grounded feet, as if he had a bit of the hobbit in his bloodline. His eyes had a diamond hardness: not harsh, but crystal clear and intentional. The air around him was so palpably quiet and focused it seemed as if I had entered another world. The place was empty besides the two of us, and at first the thick silence in the room felt suffocating. But that soon gave way to something peaceful. Eventually he asked me what I wanted, then turned his back to complete some other task before starting on my order.

I fidgeted as I waited. On the counter next to the register I saw a brochure about a Zen Buddhist community in Los Altos; it attracted my attention in a fierce way. “You ought to check it out,” the man said. He then returned his full attention to the work. I took the brochure and sat down to read it, glancing at the man as he prepared my lunch. He moved at a glacial pace, shaking tiny droplets of water from the lettuce one leaf at a time, then stepping back to place them onto the bread he had just cut. Finally he set the sandwich in front of me with such care that I got the awkward feeling of being served by someone of great spiritual development. It was in that sandwich piled high with a mountain of sprouts that the world of Zen first entered me. The man’s name was Steve Bodhian and he was an ordained monk.

I saw Steve Bodhian in his robes the following Wednesday at Haiku Zendo of Los Altos, the place on the brochure. Haiku Zendo was located in a two-car garage that had been converted into a tricked-out Japanese meditation center. When I first peeked into it I saw beautiful wheat-colored tatami mats covering the floor, and a balconylike tier of seating around the walls—also covered with tatami mats. The front wall had a central island stage built out into the room for the teacher, with two recessive platforms behind him where advanced students would sit. Regal-looking scrolls with Japanese calligraphy hung on the wall behind the teacher’s seat and ceremonial accoutrements were arranged up front: an incense cup; pillows on which two different sizes of bowl-like bells had been placed; mallets; and a long stick. The place wasn’t that big—it only seated about seventeen people—but it was so ordered and beautiful that the room’s emptiness felt spacious.

I had called during the week and was told to come on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. so that I could learn how to “sit” and conduct myself when the group arrived an hour later. A thin man in his thirties was already there. We removed our shoes, and then he took two round meditation pillows called zafus, and two soft mats called zabutons, from a wooden bin outside. He handed me a pillow and a mat, then put his pillow and mat under his arm. I followed suit, and then we began.

Upon entering the room I was instructed to bow as soon as I stepped in. Then we quietly crossed over to a wooden platform where I was shown three different ways to sit. One was with my legs folded under me on each side of the pillow. He said this was the way Japanese women in a dress would sit. The other positions were half lotus or full lotus, whereupon my guide pointed out the stability I could obtain by triangulating my bottom on the pillow and my knees on the mat. He told me, “Do whatever you can manage for a time.” I was playful with his instruction, making little jokes to make a personal connection with him. “Is falling off the pillow like falling off the wagon?” I asked. But he was all business, and so I settled down and focused. He then showed me how to cup my hands into a symmetrical shape called a hand mudra, and to place this cupping against my lower belly, just below the navel. When the time came, I was to face the wall in complete silence with my chin slightly tucked and the top of my head angled upward so that the back of my spine was straight. I was also to keep my eyelids partly open and unfocused. This way of meditating with open eyes is particular to Zen. Moreover, the exactness of form the body holds is said to be enlightenment itself. In Zen, you don’t strive for enlightenment; logic has it that you are already enlightened, so there is no journey and nothing to attain. It is powerful, elegant, and deceptively simple.

In time I would discover that all the people at the Zendo were bright and a little peculiar, that they were quiet and paid attention and laughed kindly at odd things. They seemed to all be poets and/or scientists, or married to poets and/or scientists. Most had some affiliation with Stanford University. I would learn that Japanese Buddhism had, in part, been developed for the Japanese intellectual class as a practice for emptying the mind of
intellectual sediments
. Eventually this all fit together in my understanding, but on that first day it was as if I had stumbled into the middle of an old-growth forest of tree people.

That evening I sat up in half lotus through a nearly unbearable forty minutes of meditation, until a delicate bell finally rang out. As the tone sounded, signaling the end of the period, everyone bowed. Still maintaining a careful inward focus, people scooted around on their bottoms, continuing to look downward, but this time facing the group and the teacher. Stillness returned to the room at this point, and I felt a deep resonant space open up, each person being a booming well of silence. The room was filled with a profound sense of acceptance. The quiet of the collective power was impressive while the teacher found his words. The teacher was slow to speak—and I was in such agony—that I stole a glance around to make sure everything was as it should be.
Oh God! Were we really all just going to keep sitting like this?

Finally the teacher spoke and with his first words came the most delicate, careful speech. I had never heard such profound and gentle confidence. I remember him saying, “We go to truth with nothing and we return with nothing.” This was the practice of Zazen and it moved straight into me. I could not take my eyes off the teacher, nor did I want to, though I guessed it was probably impolite. The teacher’s robes were layered and beautiful with long, looping table runner–like sleeves. Mostly he was covered in gracious folds of black material with ivory and white underlayers peeking through at the neck and wrists. His posture was tranquil and very present. Every expression was evident on his face, moving from seriousness to humor with infinite nuance. It was the first time I had listened so deeply to anyone from Japan, and between the truth in his kind face and the soft accented words of his amber voice, I became aware of an extraordinary weave of refinement.

With the powerful teacher and the mature students, my young restlessness calmed and I came to be at one in a room of sitting Buddhas. Over the hour, as the teacher spoke, incense streamed up in a single blue line, only to flutter and disperse a foot above the burn, and tip its fine white ash back into the cup from whence it came. As the sun set, the sky turned dark and a delicate candlelight lit the interior space. Afloat on the teacher’s words and thoughts, a feeling of
just we few
came into me, but this time with a generosity that seemed to include the whole world. It was like happening upon a perfect bright shell, complex and whole, lying on a shore—a gift from a tourmaline sea.
What have I found?
I wondered to myself. Over the next three years, I would sit and listen to many lectures like this first one.

Suddenly the teacher stopped speaking and a cloud cover went over his eyes as he left us to look inward. Two people came in with jingling trays of white cups, two pots of green tea, and small cookies. One by one every person in the room was served—cup, tea, napkin, and cookie—both servers going down the rows, bowing to each person, going down on their knees, and then up again to step forward to the next.

After the sitting, the lecture, the tea, and the retrieval of the cups, a tiny bell rang and everyone bowed together. It was over. People moved onto their knees to push their pillows back into shape, and then stood up. Holding zafu and zabuton under one arm, they individually bowed with one hand to the place they had just been sitting, paying homage to the space that had held them. Then everyone moved to walk out silently with one final bow at the door before stepping into the cool night. Outside, people talked and laughed in hushed tones as they put their shoes on, their slacks bulging at the knees.

I was trying to work out the teacher’s name with one of the lay monks, a guy named Trout who had kindly introduced himself. But his demeanor changed when I referred to his teacher, incorrectly, as “Chino.” The teacher’s first name was Kobun and his last name was Chino. Kobun Chino Sensei—“sensei” meaning “teacher.” Later he would become Kobun Chino Roshi—“roshi” meaning “master.” All the syllables of the teacher’s name were so completely unfamiliar to me that I didn’t know where any of the sounds began or ended. I was just doing my best with the whole thing, but my guesses were wrong and I had apparently offended the monk who now seemed incensed. “How would you like it if I called you ‘Brennan’?” the monk exclaimed.
My, but you’re easily offended!
I thought. Later I would find Trout’s requirement for exactitude the key to many important things.

Soon afterward, I learned that Kobun, who was then in his forties, had come to the United States to became the Abbot of Tassajara at the request of Suzuki Roshi, and had left Japan without his teacher’s blessing. In a culture of such ceremonial order, refinement, and conformity, Kobun had taken a huge risk in coming to America. Only later—much later—would his teacher praise him in full, telling him he had done well.

That night at the Zendo made my head swim. As I was gathering up my very first impressions and getting ready to leave, I looked over, and to my utter amazement, there was Steve, just eight feet away. I hadn’t seen or heard from him in months, not since Robert’s farm. He was standing apart from the group, waiting in the half-light. The teacher had his back turned to him, having Steve wait while he greeted people who approached as a part of the evening’s ritual. A student’s waiting for his teacher’s attention is as old as time itself. Steve had that third eye focus, but he looked so thin and vulnerable—he seemed to be barely hanging on. My heart gripped with pity, but I was also simply happy to see him, so walked over to say hello. Once he’d caught sight of me, however, I saw the shadow of a thought cross his face:
Oh no, not you.

“When did you return from the farm?” I asked. “Are you living at your parents’ house?” Steve gave me vague, one-word answers and peered down into me as if I were at the bottom of a very deep gorge. He had become a stranger and it shook me to my core. I said good-bye and left as quickly as I could.