Zen at Work [Paperback]

Les Kaye (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 1997

A Zen teacher who balanced his commitment to Zen practice with a high-level business career shares the wisdom and practical experience he gained by integrating spiritual practice into the workplace. 192 pp. National publicity. 10,000 print.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kaye worked at IBM for 30 years as a design engineer. He studied Zen, became a Zen master and, upon his retirement, became the Abbott of Kannon Do, a Zen Meditation Center in Mountain View, Calif. Here, Kaye shares how he came to find that his workplace could become the site of his religious practice. He learned that he could shift his interest to the dynamic process of work, to the best ways of approaching tasks and relationships so that the work environment could express a spiritual, communal feeling. The being-in-the-world emphasized in Zen, Kaye found, was no different from the character traits of integrity, morality, self-discipline, willingness to learn, responsibility and perseverance which IBM encouraged in its employees. Kaye's book is an extraordinary witness to the way Zen practice can mesh with corporate culture, for the book demonstrates elegantly how Zen thinking can transform an individual's experience of the workplace.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Kaye worked in several technical and administrative positions at IBM from 1956 to 1988 and at the same time took up the study and practice of Zen Buddhist meditation. He eventually became the abbot of the Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center in Mountain View, California. The author discovered that the precepts of Zen could be expressed everywhere in daily life and that they enhanced his ability to deal with challenging situations in the corporate world. In this engaging personal narrative, he skillfully interweaves vignettes of workplace activities with expressions of Zen Buddhist philosophy. He provides an interesting exploration of the successful integration of a committed spiritual practice and daily corporate and family life. His thoughtful, understandable, and insightful presentation offers real examples of the practical application of spiritual wisdom. Recommended for larger public libraries and business collections.?Elizabeth Salt, Otterbein Coll. Lib., Westerville, Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (January 28, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517886200
• ISBN-13: 978-0517886205
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #205,184 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A spiritual master piece. ...the "Yoga of Action", February 5, 2006

By 

Master Yoda - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Zen at Work (Paperback)

This book is a master piece on spirituality. I mean spirituality that is relevant and spiritualtiy that matters. I am an ex-IBMer myself and have been in meditation for many years. This book was the missing link in my understanding of spiritual life and professional life in an integrated whole, as varying expressions of the same grand idea that the soul sometimes knows intuitively but can't easily express.

The spirituality that is relevant has to be expressed in one's works. If we can't exercise spirituality in work, we have defeated God's purpose in our creation . Les Kaye refers to God as "Big Mind" and states all that we do has to be expression of this "Big Mind". The work-ethic that flows out of its integration with the "Big Mind" neither leads to boredom, nor to anxiety. Your work becomes your meditation, your prayer, your sacred liturgy!

Though there is nothing new in this idea. It has been taught in many cultures. The Hindu doctrine of "Karma Yoga" ("yoga of action") , as taught in "Bhagvad Gita" , is perhaps the most comprehensive classical treatise on the idea of "Zen at Work". Similarly , many Sufis Masters in Islam have tried to teach the same idea. In Christianity, we have the writing of Brother Lawrence about practising the "presence of God" in our mundane work. So although "Zen at Work", is essentially a Buddist idea, it does find echo in other spiritual teachings.

But what gives force to this book is not the originality of the idea, but the originality of the interpetation of this idea in the contemporary corporate milieu, enriched by author's own life long experience at the Big Blue. We are the instruments of God, the "Big Mind", for his sacred task of creation. Creator is creating with us and through us. If our sprituality comes in the way of this divine task of creation, for whatever reason, then obviously we have betrayed the spiritual purpose that we were created with. This is a vital idea that all serious spiritualists/meditators need to grasp. Spirituality that makes us hide from our 'worldly' responsibilities is a false spirituality. If you have absorbed spirituality properly, then the falseness of dichotomy between 'spiritual' and 'worldly' immediately becomes clear. Both are in reality expressions of each other, when rightly understood.

Zen at Work teaches us how to make ourselves the intruments of the Divine Creator, by removing our ego from the way, so that the "Big Mind" expresses its peace, harmony and majesty through us. Letting go of the 'small mind', i.e. ego, so that "Big Mind" flows spontaneously through us. This is the kernel of this great book. When we let the "Big Mind" express through us, then all our worries, anxieties and boredom - that are sometime natural products of our unfeeling capitalist evironment- also disappear. The work , however mundane and tedious, becomes an expression of an ecstatic union with the divine. The 'hot Buddha', the 'cold Buddha', the 'home Buddha', the 'temple Buddha'...and the "WORK Buddha'!


Thank you Les Kaye for this "great gift" from the "Big Mind".

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Spiritual teachings in and from the marketplace, July 17, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Zen at Work (Paperback)

Review of Zen at Work. Bright side. Les Kaye is a Soto Zen teacher who spent several decades in training, starting with Suzuki-roshi, and concurrently worked as an engineer at IBM for the same period of time. In this text he shuttles back and forth between work anecdotes and more standardized spiritual teachings (sermon-like). In doing so he intertwines threads of the theoretical and the real to illustrate how Zen contextualizes problems so they appear as they are rather than as we imagine them. The book covers a fair ground of topics, i.e., relationships, self-expression, communication, fearlessness, letting-go, emphasizing two principles; big (oceanic) mind, and no separation between subject and object. Most Zen authors mention the need for an integration of spiritual practice and everyday life. Les Kaye has taken this recommendation one step further by illustrating how he dealt with corporate problems spiritually. This is clearly the strength, as well as the emphasis of the book; carrying water and chopping wood really are the focus of everyday practice. It is fun to imagine that Les has a subtle sense of humor, that is, the title reads as a pun. Take it as "Men (Zen) at Work", an icon of religious effort, or read it simply as Zen brought to the marketplace. Dull side. Les Kaye's description of his work life and his practice life seems incomplete. During the three plus decades covered by this memoir-teaching, San Francisco Zen centers and IBM went through momentous changes in growth and leadership, some positive and some negative. I assume that Les Kaye wanted to restrict his description of Zen and worklife to basically positive events but a description of Zen and "real life" might demand an assessment of what makes Zen work under trying circumstances. Not every Zen manual has to describe how traumatic life can be, but Les lived through historic times for western Zen practice and I feel he has a responsibility to tell us how he dealt with it. Possibly, Mr. Kaye was never strongly concerned with these dramatic changes; raising a family and working full time are certainly involving by themselves, but if this is true he should tell us rather than leave us wondering.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent, But Not Best in Class, September 23, 2009

By 

Irfan A. Alvi (Towson, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Zen at Work (Paperback)

If spirituality is to be taken seriously, I think it has to be related to contemporary everyday life, including 'work'. In that regard, I've previously read the following two books which specifically relate Zen/Taoism to work:

- The Tao of Personal Leadership by Diane Dreher
- Real Power by James Autry

I found these books to be enlightening and enjoyable, so it made sense to next try Les Kaye's book. The result was that, though Kaye's book does surely contain some wisdom, it failed to really engage me, so I didn't really gain or grow much by reading it.

The main problem seems to have been the book's presentation. First, I found the overall organization of the book to be fairly haphazard and fragmented. Second, the writing (at the level of sections, paragraphs, and sentences) didn't have the crispness and clarity of the other two books I've mentioned, so I wondered how mature Kaye's understanding really is. I acknowledge that the shortcoming may be mine, especially given that Huston Smith has praised this book, but I'll stick with my guns since I have other books to compare with, plus I've generally spent plenty of time studying Zen and Taoism over the years.

Since other people have praised this book, and since I got at least a little bit out of it also, I do think it's worth considering by people interested in this topic. But I find the other books I've mentioned to be considerably better, so I can only rate this book three stars by comparison, and I can't strongly recommend it.