cover image Zen at Work

Zen at Work

Les Kaye. Three Rivers Press (CA), $14 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-517-88620-5

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. (Feb.)