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Steve Jobs emptied out his home

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and it had nothing to do with minimalism

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in nineteen eighty two

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a photographer walked into Jobs' home in California

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and took a photograph

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in that photo

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the living room is almost empty

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no sofa

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no coffee table

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and no TV cabinet

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a twenty seven year old Jobs sits cross legged on the floor

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beside him only a Tiffany lamp

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a stereo

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a few vinyl records

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a notebook

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and a cup of tea

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many years later he talked about this photo himself

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and he said it very plainly

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he said

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that was a very typical time in my life

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I was living alone

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all you need is a cup of tea a lamp and a stereo

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and that was all I had back then

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that photo has been shared countless times since

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and the caption is almost always the same line

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look

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this is what minimalism means

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but the same man

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has another story

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after he got married

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the family needed to buy a washing machine

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he and his wife sat at the dinner table

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and discussed this washing machine every night

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for about two weeks

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what they debated was not the price

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it was why European machines wash more slowly

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but use less water

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and are gentler on clothes

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in the end they bought a German Miele

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then there is the sofa

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his wife once said something

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that left me staring at the page for a long time

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she said

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when it came to furniture

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we spent eight years talking about it in theory

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we spent a lot of time asking ourselves one question

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what is a sofa actually for

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eight years

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so you see

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that empty living room

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may not have been about him letting anything go at all

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hello

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everyone

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I am Leo Wang

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a few days ago I got a letter from a friend

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he said he had followed my site through two full series

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and really enjoyed them

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then he asked me a question

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he wanted me to take a Buddhist angle

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and talk about the book Minimalism

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he also raised two things he could never figure out

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why do people like Jobs after practicing Zen

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end up championing minimalism

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and why did this wind blow so hard in the West and in Japan

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he said he felt it had something to do with the default mode network in the brain

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but he could not quite explain it

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I read that letter twice

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I think he asked a very good question

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and what makes it good is this

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these are actually three different things

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that we habitually tie together

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today I want to take these three ropes

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and untie them one by one

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let us start with the book itself

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Minimalism was written by two Americans

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one is Joshua Fields Millburn

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the other is Ryan Nicodemus

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they are not philosophers

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and they are not monks

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they were two young men working at a telecom company

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Millburn was a director of operations

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overseeing a hundred and fifty retail stores

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in twenty eleven

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the company handed him an assignment

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to draw up a plan

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to close eight stores

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and lay off forty one people

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he finished the plan

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and then he quit

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Nicodemus worked in sales and marketing

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that same year

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he was laid off himself

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the two of them left their jobs

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and wrote a book

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the book is called Minimalism

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and the subtitle is live a meaningful life

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there is one thing in the book

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that I think is written really well

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they call it the packing party

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what Nicodemus did was this

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he took everything in his home

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and packed it all into boxes

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everything

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clothes pots and pans towels appliances

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the TV picture frames art toiletries

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even the furniture went in

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once it was packed he just went on living

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whatever he needed

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he would unpack from a box

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three weeks later

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he counted

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eighty percent of his things were still sealed in the boxes

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never opened once

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he said

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they just sat there

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and nobody touched them

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I think the value of this experiment is real

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it does something very plain

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it lets a person see what they own for the first time

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normally we cannot see it

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leave an object in your home for three years

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and it becomes background

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it becomes part of the wall

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you stop noticing that it exists

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so you never ask why it is there

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what the packing party does

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is turn the background back into foreground

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this move is familiar in Buddhism too

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seeing

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is always the first step

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so the book deserves credit

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and I do not want to erase that

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but next

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I want to talk about where it stops

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notice the subtitle of the book

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live a meaningful life

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the structure is this

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subtraction is the means

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a meaningful life is the end

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the first time I felt something was off

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was when I saw a number going around in minimalist circles

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someone counted all their possessions down to a hundred items

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someone else got to two hundred and eighty eight

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and then they posted the number online

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when I saw that number

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something in me skipped

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because counting down to two hundred and eighty eight things

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and counting your savings up to eight figures

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run on the same counter

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the needle just points the other way

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but the machine itself has not changed at all

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what is this machine

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Buddhism has a name for it

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but let me hold off on the name

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you have probably had moments like this

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you changed jobs

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you changed cities

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you changed relationships

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you thought you were swapping out the problem

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six months later you notice

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that familiar stifled feeling is back

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just wearing new clothes

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what you changed was the circumstance

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what you did not change is the mind that clings to changing

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Buddhism calls this mind self attachment

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and the machine that runs nonstop labeling everything as mine

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is called the manas consciousness

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it has only one job

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to keep confirming who I am

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whatever material you feed it

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it can process

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give it a house and a car

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and it manufactures an I am successful

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give it a hundred possessions

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and it manufactures an I am awake

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it does not care about direction

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it only cares about having work to do

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so someone empties out their home

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and then quietly starts to feel

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that they live more clearly than the neighbor downstairs

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in that moment

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the distance between him and letting go

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is the same as before he emptied anything

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maybe even a little farther

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because the old mind that wanted more

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was at least out in the open

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this new one

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has put on plain clothes

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the book stops at owning less

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Buddhism takes one more step

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to seeing clearly why you want

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these two look alike

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but they are not the same thing

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now let us come back to Jobs

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his relationship with Zen was real

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it was not packaging

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around nineteen seventy four or seventy five

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he was sitting at a Zen center in Los Altos California

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the priest there was Kobun Chino Otogawa

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from Niigata Japan

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a Soto Zen monk

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ordained at twelve

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fully trained at Eiheiji

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and later he went to America

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that relationship lasted about twenty years

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in nineteen ninety one Jobs got married

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the wedding was held in Yosemite

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only about fifty people came

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and Kobun officiated

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he struck the bell

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and burned incense

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later Jobs left Apple

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and founded another computer company

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for several years

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Kobun was that company's spiritual advisor

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they kept coming back to one question

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how can a person run a business

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and still keep a spiritual life

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he even seriously considered

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ordaining at Eiheiji in Japan

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and it was Kobun who talked him out of it

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Kobun told him

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you can run a business

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and keep your practice at the same time

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he always kept a book called Zen Mind Beginner's Mind close by

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written by Shunryu Suzuki

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an early roommate remembered

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that this was Steve's favorite

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so this man

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really did practice Zen

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and really did live in an empty house

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and so everyone drew the obvious conclusion

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Zen made him a minimalist

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but I want you to look again at that washing machine

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and at those eight years of sofa talk

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Jobs' father was a craftsman

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his adoptive father

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named Paul

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he taught Jobs one line

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that Jobs repeated his whole life

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he said

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when you build a fence

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nobody will see the back

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but you still have to make it as good as the front

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later when Jobs was building computers

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his engineers told him

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the circuit board goes inside the case

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users will never see it

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so it does not matter how it looks

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he disagreed

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his exact words were

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I want it to be as beautiful as possible

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even if it is inside the box

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a good carpenter

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would not use a cheap piece of wood on the back of a cabinet

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just because nobody will see it

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put these two things side by side

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and the mystery of the empty house dissolves

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he did not want less

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he wanted every single piece to be right

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he could not find the right sofa

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so he went eight years without one

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he could not pick the right washing machine

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so the family debated it at the dinner table for two weeks

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his home was empty

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not because he had no attachment to objects

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but precisely because his standards for objects were almost punishing

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emptiness

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was a byproduct of those extreme standards

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not a fruit of his practice

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this is the line I most want to draw clearly for you today

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less

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can come from letting go

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or it can come from being picky

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from the outside

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the two empty rooms look identical

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from the inside

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one is a hand opening

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the other is a hand gripping tighter

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there is one more thing

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and saying it may spoil the mood

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but I think it should be said

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during those very years of sitting practice

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he routinely parked in handicapped spaces

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an Apple executive once remarked

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saying

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00:09:41,103 --> 00:09:42,276
I never knew

288
00:09:42,344 --> 00:09:45,837
that those spots were reserved for the emotionally handicapped

289
00:09:46,103 --> 00:09:48,757
in nineteen seventy eight his daughter Lisa was born

290
00:09:48,983 --> 00:09:50,357
he denied it for a long time

291
00:09:50,503 --> 00:09:53,676
the paternity test came back at ninety four point four one percent

292
00:09:53,824 --> 00:09:54,997
and he still argued

293
00:09:55,064 --> 00:09:57,463
claiming twenty eight percent of the men in America

294
00:09:57,464 --> 00:09:59,357
could be the child's father

295
00:09:59,584 --> 00:10:01,717
I am not saying this to put him on trial

296
00:10:02,344 --> 00:10:03,676
he was a remarkable man

297
00:10:03,743 --> 00:10:06,556
he changed the thing every one of us holds in our hand today

298
00:10:07,064 --> 00:10:09,597
I say it only to point out a fact

299
00:10:09,983 --> 00:10:10,896
twenty years of Zen practice

300
00:10:11,223 --> 00:10:12,556
and living in an empty house

301
00:10:12,584 --> 00:10:16,916
neither one automatically produced basic respect for the people around him

302
00:10:17,771 --> 00:10:20,305
there is a tech writer named Silberman

303
00:10:20,411 --> 00:10:21,690
who once made a comment

304
00:10:21,691 --> 00:10:22,704
that I think is exactly right

305
00:10:22,978 --> 00:10:23,777
he said

306
00:10:23,852 --> 00:10:26,665
Jobs skipped the most central teaching in Buddhism

307
00:10:26,852 --> 00:10:28,504
toward every person around you

308
00:10:28,571 --> 00:10:30,210
even the ones you consider enemies

309
00:10:30,212 --> 00:10:32,025
keep a basic respect

310
00:10:32,651 --> 00:10:34,145
practice is not tidying up

311
00:10:34,531 --> 00:10:35,204
the emptiness of a room

312
00:10:35,612 --> 00:10:36,624
and the emptiness of a mind

313
00:10:36,771 --> 00:10:38,210
the distance between them

314
00:10:38,212 --> 00:10:40,344
may be far greater than we imagine

315
00:10:41,065 --> 00:10:41,258
alright

316
00:10:41,744 --> 00:10:43,957
now to my friend's second question

317
00:10:44,784 --> 00:10:47,998
why did this wind blow so hard in Japan and the West

318
00:10:48,504 --> 00:10:49,337
my view is

319
00:10:49,664 --> 00:10:51,278
these are actually two different winds

320
00:10:51,544 --> 00:10:52,998
blowing in completely different directions

321
00:10:53,225 --> 00:10:54,297
we are just standing too far away

322
00:10:54,544 --> 00:10:55,557
and we see them as one

323
00:10:56,144 --> 00:10:57,118
let us start with Japan

324
00:10:57,504 --> 00:10:59,437
there is a widely repeated claim

325
00:10:59,705 --> 00:11:04,037
that the twenty eleven Tohoku earthquake made Japanese people start throwing things away

326
00:11:04,305 --> 00:11:05,917
and that is where danshari came from

327
00:11:06,305 --> 00:11:07,778
the story sounds tidy

328
00:11:08,105 --> 00:11:09,677
but the timeline does not fit

329
00:11:10,144 --> 00:11:12,837
Hideko Yamashita's book on danshari

330
00:11:12,904 --> 00:11:14,797
came out in two thousand nine

331
00:11:14,985 --> 00:11:18,518
and by twenty ten it was already a buzzword finalist in Japan

332
00:11:18,904 --> 00:11:21,158
the earthquake was in March twenty eleven

333
00:11:22,065 --> 00:11:22,738
which means

334
00:11:23,105 --> 00:11:24,557
danshari took off

335
00:11:24,585 --> 00:11:26,518
a full two years before the quake

336
00:11:27,091 --> 00:11:28,465
I had the literature searched

337
00:11:28,492 --> 00:11:30,730
and found no study

338
00:11:30,732 --> 00:11:34,744
showing a causal link between the earthquake and the trend

339
00:11:35,372 --> 00:11:37,185
so the more accurate way to put it

340
00:11:37,252 --> 00:11:39,224
is that the earthquake was a catalyst

341
00:11:39,331 --> 00:11:40,425
not a cause

342
00:11:41,211 --> 00:11:44,144
what is interesting is the reason Fumio Sasaki gives

343
00:11:44,252 --> 00:11:45,344
it is very practical

344
00:11:45,851 --> 00:11:46,205
he said

345
00:11:46,612 --> 00:11:48,144
of the people injured in the quake

346
00:11:48,211 --> 00:11:53,024
thirty to fifty percent were hit by things toppling or falling

347
00:11:53,652 --> 00:11:54,884
that is his own claim

348
00:11:55,132 --> 00:11:56,384
not a statistic

349
00:11:56,772 --> 00:11:58,124
but you can hear the logic

350
00:11:58,571 --> 00:11:59,425
in Japan

351
00:11:59,532 --> 00:12:02,585
owning less is first of all a safety issue

352
00:12:02,991 --> 00:12:05,364
and the real foundation of this Japanese wind

353
00:12:05,512 --> 00:12:07,605
I think lies much earlier

354
00:12:07,991 --> 00:12:09,284
in the tea room

355
00:12:09,752 --> 00:12:10,585
one tea room

356
00:12:11,032 --> 00:12:11,585
four and a half tatami mats

357
00:12:12,071 --> 00:12:13,325
one scroll on the wall

358
00:12:13,432 --> 00:12:14,305
one arrangement of flowers on the floor

359
00:12:14,831 --> 00:12:16,205
and nothing else

360
00:12:16,351 --> 00:12:18,325
your first feeling walking in is

361
00:12:18,432 --> 00:12:19,884
that a lot is missing here

362
00:12:20,471 --> 00:12:22,485
but people in the tea ceremony do not see it that way

363
00:12:22,831 --> 00:12:23,911
what they see is

364
00:12:23,912 --> 00:12:26,524
that the blank space itself is also an object

365
00:12:27,191 --> 00:12:28,845
negative space is not a failure to place something

366
00:12:29,191 --> 00:12:31,004
negative space is placing an emptiness

367
00:12:31,591 --> 00:12:32,924
this is an aesthetic

368
00:12:33,191 --> 00:12:36,965
the ability to treat absence itself as content

369
00:12:37,351 --> 00:12:39,065
and that is not the same as saying I want to cut my craving for things

370
00:12:39,432 --> 00:12:40,445
those are two different matters

371
00:12:41,332 --> 00:12:42,745
now the Western wind

372
00:12:43,172 --> 00:12:44,505
the timeline is clear

373
00:12:44,932 --> 00:12:46,505
two thousand eight the financial crisis

374
00:12:46,932 --> 00:12:49,505
twenty ten those two men started a blog

375
00:12:49,973 --> 00:12:51,946
twenty eleven they quit their jobs

376
00:12:52,493 --> 00:12:55,946
twenty fourteen Marie Kondo's book came out in English

377
00:12:56,412 --> 00:12:59,865
twenty sixteen the documentary called Minimalism went online

378
00:13:00,452 --> 00:13:01,931
after a great recession

379
00:13:01,932 --> 00:13:04,186
people start to doubt the whole business of owning

380
00:13:04,292 --> 00:13:05,585
and that is only natural

381
00:13:05,983 --> 00:13:07,636
but there is one finding here

382
00:13:07,703 --> 00:13:10,156
that I think the friend who wrote to me will enjoy

383
00:13:10,422 --> 00:13:13,595
there is a scholar named Currid-Halkett

384
00:13:13,782 --> 00:13:16,142
in twenty seventeen she proposed a concept

385
00:13:16,142 --> 00:13:17,555
called the aspirational class

386
00:13:17,782 --> 00:13:18,136
she says

387
00:13:18,463 --> 00:13:20,116
today's highly educated group

388
00:13:20,142 --> 00:13:24,156
no longer marks itself with big houses and luxury cars

389
00:13:24,343 --> 00:13:26,276
they have turned to another kind of consumption

390
00:13:26,422 --> 00:13:28,715
she calls it inconspicuous consumption

391
00:13:29,063 --> 00:13:29,975
spent on education

392
00:13:30,343 --> 00:13:31,916
spent on organic food

393
00:13:31,943 --> 00:13:32,896
spent on yoga

394
00:13:33,262 --> 00:13:34,996
spent on which podcasts you listen to

395
00:13:35,262 --> 00:13:37,475
she has one very sharp line

396
00:13:37,628 --> 00:13:38,429
she says

397
00:13:38,502 --> 00:13:42,516
a two dollar heirloom tomato from the farmers market

398
00:13:42,743 --> 00:13:44,061
carries more symbolic weight

399
00:13:44,063 --> 00:13:46,435
than a white Range Rover

400
00:13:46,990 --> 00:13:48,043
in twenty twenty two

401
00:13:48,110 --> 00:13:51,083
a study came out in the Journal of Consumer Research

402
00:13:51,309 --> 00:13:53,203
two scholars built a scale

403
00:13:53,230 --> 00:13:55,362
to measure how minimalist a person is

404
00:13:55,589 --> 00:13:58,323
the data showed a weak but stable correlation

405
00:13:58,469 --> 00:13:59,988
people from wealthier childhoods

406
00:13:59,990 --> 00:14:02,122
scored slightly higher on minimalism

407
00:14:02,350 --> 00:14:03,583
the authors themselves were careful

408
00:14:03,829 --> 00:14:05,522
and only ventured a guess

409
00:14:05,630 --> 00:14:07,583
that material abundance may come first

410
00:14:07,870 --> 00:14:08,923
and minimalism after

411
00:14:09,150 --> 00:14:10,828
there is another scholar named Meissner

412
00:14:10,829 --> 00:14:12,722
who wrote a line in twenty nineteen

413
00:14:12,789 --> 00:14:15,722
that I want to use as a footnote for this episode

414
00:14:15,856 --> 00:14:16,655
he said

415
00:14:16,750 --> 00:14:20,323
the lifestyle minimalism narrative is self contradictory

416
00:14:20,350 --> 00:14:22,828
it resists the culture of growth

417
00:14:22,829 --> 00:14:24,522
while feeding that culture at the same time

418
00:14:25,309 --> 00:14:28,482
I also saw an American writer put it even more painfully

419
00:14:28,589 --> 00:14:28,943
she said

420
00:14:29,429 --> 00:14:31,722
for Americans who are struggling

421
00:14:31,829 --> 00:14:34,602
living with less is an economic necessity

422
00:14:34,669 --> 00:14:36,722
not a lifestyle choice

423
00:14:37,576 --> 00:14:39,469
put these lines together

424
00:14:39,537 --> 00:14:41,710
and the Western wind becomes clear

425
00:14:42,096 --> 00:14:43,509
part of it is sincere

426
00:14:43,576 --> 00:14:45,389
a real reckoning with overconsumption

427
00:14:45,576 --> 00:14:47,389
and I fully grant that

428
00:14:47,737 --> 00:14:49,469
but there is another part

429
00:14:49,897 --> 00:14:51,310
the content of the showing off has changed

430
00:14:51,657 --> 00:14:53,749
it used to be look what I have

431
00:14:54,017 --> 00:14:56,550
now it is look what I do not need

432
00:14:57,056 --> 00:14:58,830
the first is greed out in the open

433
00:14:59,296 --> 00:15:01,830
the second is greed in plain clothes

434
00:15:02,377 --> 00:15:05,389
I am not saying everyone who practices minimalism is showing off

435
00:15:05,737 --> 00:15:06,550
I am saying

436
00:15:06,576 --> 00:15:10,190
that machine does not stop just because you switched lanes

437
00:15:10,497 --> 00:15:12,109
it switches lanes right along with you

438
00:15:12,894 --> 00:15:13,287
finally

439
00:15:13,614 --> 00:15:15,748
the thing my friend cared about most

440
00:15:15,855 --> 00:15:17,268
the default mode network

441
00:15:17,654 --> 00:15:18,707
here is the conclusion first

442
00:15:19,095 --> 00:15:21,108
his intuition points the right way

443
00:15:21,254 --> 00:15:23,028
but a link is missing in the middle

444
00:15:23,294 --> 00:15:25,947
and that link is exactly the crucial one

445
00:15:26,494 --> 00:15:28,587
there is a system in our brain

446
00:15:28,774 --> 00:15:31,587
and when you are doing nothing at all just spacing out

447
00:15:31,654 --> 00:15:32,908
it is at its busiest

448
00:15:33,374 --> 00:15:34,287
what is it busy with

449
00:15:34,855 --> 00:15:37,148
it is telling a story about me

450
00:15:37,494 --> 00:15:38,488
how I used to be

451
00:15:38,855 --> 00:15:40,427
what I should do next

452
00:15:40,614 --> 00:15:42,988
what did that person really mean just now

453
00:15:43,215 --> 00:15:44,748
does he look down on me

454
00:15:45,134 --> 00:15:45,847
this system

455
00:15:46,175 --> 00:15:48,053
was given a name by scientists

456
00:15:48,055 --> 00:15:49,947
the default mode network

457
00:15:50,335 --> 00:15:52,854
we have covered this name several times on this channel

458
00:15:52,855 --> 00:15:54,228
so I will not repeat it today

459
00:15:54,935 --> 00:15:56,707
what I want to talk about is its limits

460
00:15:57,694 --> 00:15:59,707
I had the literature searched thoroughly

461
00:16:00,095 --> 00:16:01,048
and as of today

462
00:16:01,414 --> 00:16:03,107
there is not a single study

463
00:16:03,174 --> 00:16:05,707
that has directly tested whether emptying a room

464
00:16:05,774 --> 00:16:08,508
changes activity in the default mode network

465
00:16:08,894 --> 00:16:10,028
not one

466
00:16:10,294 --> 00:16:13,947
the articles online linking minimalism to this brain network

467
00:16:14,174 --> 00:16:15,548
are all inference

468
00:16:15,694 --> 00:16:18,107
not one can produce an original study

469
00:16:18,615 --> 00:16:20,548
I am not saying this to be a killjoy

470
00:16:20,894 --> 00:16:21,768
in fact I think

471
00:16:21,975 --> 00:16:23,587
once you take it this far

472
00:16:23,615 --> 00:16:25,308
things finally get interesting

473
00:16:25,735 --> 00:16:28,014
because the evidence we actually have

474
00:16:28,015 --> 00:16:29,227
is two other things

475
00:16:29,671 --> 00:16:30,470
the first

476
00:16:30,604 --> 00:16:33,297
is the twenty eleven study from Brewer's team

477
00:16:33,805 --> 00:16:34,724
they found

478
00:16:34,724 --> 00:16:37,057
that experienced meditators while sitting

479
00:16:37,165 --> 00:16:39,817
show lower activity in a region called the posterior cingulate cortex

480
00:16:39,844 --> 00:16:41,338
than beginners do

481
00:16:42,085 --> 00:16:43,937
this is an important study

482
00:16:44,004 --> 00:16:45,937
but its limits need stating

483
00:16:46,364 --> 00:16:47,878
there were only twenty four subjects

484
00:16:48,285 --> 00:16:49,537
split evenly

485
00:16:50,165 --> 00:16:51,998
the authors wrote it in the paper themselves

486
00:16:52,325 --> 00:16:53,618
the sample is small

487
00:16:53,724 --> 00:16:56,458
and prone to inflated positive results

488
00:16:56,764 --> 00:16:58,118
and this is correlation

489
00:16:58,565 --> 00:16:59,578
not causation

490
00:16:59,964 --> 00:17:02,697
we cannot say meditation quieted that region

491
00:17:02,844 --> 00:17:03,358
only that

492
00:17:03,764 --> 00:17:05,978
meditation experience and that quiet

493
00:17:06,045 --> 00:17:07,578
showed up together

494
00:17:08,451 --> 00:17:09,252
the second

495
00:17:09,306 --> 00:17:13,038
is a UCLA study from twenty ten

496
00:17:13,665 --> 00:17:15,219
thirty dual income couples

497
00:17:15,705 --> 00:17:16,919
sixty people in total

498
00:17:17,026 --> 00:17:19,639
filmed their own homes on camera

499
00:17:19,705 --> 00:17:20,838
narrating as they went

500
00:17:21,226 --> 00:17:23,719
the researchers did not measure how messy the homes actually were

501
00:17:23,905 --> 00:17:26,719
they analyzed the words these people used

502
00:17:27,226 --> 00:17:30,719
those who used words like cluttered and unfinished more often

503
00:17:30,865 --> 00:17:33,598
had flatter cortisol rhythms over the next three days

504
00:17:33,905 --> 00:17:37,399
a pattern associated with poorer health

505
00:17:37,865 --> 00:17:40,118
but this study has three limits too

506
00:17:40,145 --> 00:17:41,318
and I have to state them

507
00:17:41,746 --> 00:17:44,318
the effect showed up mainly in women

508
00:17:44,746 --> 00:17:47,038
what was measured is how you talk about your home

509
00:17:47,145 --> 00:17:49,239
not how cluttered the home objectively is

510
00:17:50,066 --> 00:17:51,699
and again this is correlation

511
00:17:51,986 --> 00:17:52,959
not causation

512
00:17:53,729 --> 00:17:55,447
putting these two together

513
00:17:55,448 --> 00:17:57,381
the conclusion I reach is this

514
00:17:57,648 --> 00:17:58,442
physical less

515
00:17:58,809 --> 00:18:00,182
and psychological ease

516
00:18:00,289 --> 00:18:01,381
are two separate lines

517
00:18:01,809 --> 00:18:02,641
they can meet

518
00:18:02,968 --> 00:18:04,581
but they are not the same line

519
00:18:05,009 --> 00:18:05,841
and the order

520
00:18:06,128 --> 00:18:08,702
is very likely the reverse of what we assume

521
00:18:08,968 --> 00:18:11,541
that storytelling machine going quiet

522
00:18:11,648 --> 00:18:13,048
is the result of practice

523
00:18:13,049 --> 00:18:14,061
not the cause

524
00:18:14,489 --> 00:18:15,641
empty out your room

525
00:18:15,968 --> 00:18:17,222
and it does not shut down

526
00:18:17,608 --> 00:18:19,861
it starts writing a new story

527
00:18:20,168 --> 00:18:21,162
and the story is called

528
00:18:21,569 --> 00:18:23,262
I am a minimalist

529
00:18:24,116 --> 00:18:25,229
so what should we actually do

530
00:18:25,757 --> 00:18:28,209
I want to go back to the three characters in danshari

531
00:18:28,437 --> 00:18:30,516
they came out of yoga

532
00:18:30,517 --> 00:18:32,769
refusing discarding and detaching

533
00:18:33,076 --> 00:18:33,830
that last one detaching

534
00:18:34,237 --> 00:18:36,489
originally means leaving your attachment to things

535
00:18:36,517 --> 00:18:37,610
not leaving things

536
00:18:37,717 --> 00:18:38,709
the difference is tiny

537
00:18:38,957 --> 00:18:40,330
but it decides the direction

538
00:18:40,596 --> 00:18:42,969
what you have to deal with was never the cabinet

539
00:18:43,036 --> 00:18:44,650
it is the moment you open the cabinet

540
00:18:44,796 --> 00:18:46,130
and something moves inside you

541
00:18:47,143 --> 00:18:48,476
back to Jobs one last time

542
00:18:48,982 --> 00:18:50,595
what he took from Zen

543
00:18:50,863 --> 00:18:52,756
may have been genuinely precious

544
00:18:52,942 --> 00:18:54,756
just not the empty house

545
00:18:54,982 --> 00:18:56,221
he had one ability

546
00:18:56,222 --> 00:18:59,115
to cut a hundred things down to one

547
00:18:59,462 --> 00:19:00,741
after he returned to Apple

548
00:19:00,742 --> 00:19:02,915
he killed most of the product lines

549
00:19:02,982 --> 00:19:04,195
and kept only four

550
00:19:04,303 --> 00:19:06,301
that ability is not called minimalism

551
00:19:06,303 --> 00:19:08,595
it is closer to what Buddhism calls samadhi

552
00:19:08,982 --> 00:19:10,056
not owning little

553
00:19:10,343 --> 00:19:11,635
but attention that does not scatter

554
00:19:11,903 --> 00:19:14,915
a person can live in a room packed with things

555
00:19:14,982 --> 00:19:16,076
with a settled mind

556
00:19:16,303 --> 00:19:18,476
or live in an empty room

557
00:19:18,502 --> 00:19:20,036
with a storm inside

558
00:19:21,201 --> 00:19:23,934
so I want to leave you with one last question

559
00:19:24,320 --> 00:19:25,154
if one day

560
00:19:25,521 --> 00:19:27,414
you really do empty out your house

561
00:19:27,521 --> 00:19:29,293
down to a hundred items

562
00:19:29,560 --> 00:19:31,574
and the restlessness is still there

563
00:19:32,040 --> 00:19:33,733
will you start to suspect

564
00:19:33,761 --> 00:19:36,434
that the problem was never in the house

565
00:19:37,040 --> 00:19:37,753
and when that happens

566
00:19:38,161 --> 00:19:39,240
what you need to throw out

567
00:19:39,241 --> 00:19:40,813
is probably something else

568
00:19:41,885 --> 00:19:42,917
what do you think about this

569
00:19:43,524 --> 00:19:47,038
do you know someone with piles of stuff and a very quiet mind

570
00:19:47,484 --> 00:19:48,238
or the other way around

571
00:19:48,484 --> 00:19:49,803
an empty home

572
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and a mind that never stops running

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tell me in the comments

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I am Leo Wang

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and I will see you next time