Mindful
Earlier that morning at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Chade-Meng Tan, a veteran engineer, was laughing about the demand for an in-house course he created called "Search Inside Yourself." The seven-week class teaches mindfulness, a loose term that covers an array of attention-training practices. It may mean spending 10 minutes with eyes closed on a gold-threaded pillow every morning or truly listening to your mother-in-law for once. Google naturally sees it as another utility widget for staying ahead. "Whenever we put the class online, it sells out in 30 seconds," Mr. Tan said.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist leader who introduced mindfulness to Westerners (Google got first dibs on him as a guest speaker), once said, "The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention." Yet for the majority of sentient beings today, simply getting through an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" without tending multiple screens is a quasi-mystical triumph. Naturally, the architects of our electronic age approach the situation as if it were an engineering problem.
At the Wisdom meet-up in September at the Hub, a smiley young man with a nametag that read "Walter Inward" was showing off a new smoking-cessation app he had created for the iPhone. On one wrist, he wore a Buddhist mala bead bracelet; on the other, a high-tech Basis band that uses skin conductivity to record heart rate, sleep and steps.
He turned out to be Walter Roth, 30, chief executive of a tech start-up called Inward Inc. Mr. Roth said he had attended every Wisdom 2.0 event since 2009. Mindfulness has made him more competitive, he said. "Not only do I put fewer things on my to-list but I actually get them done and done well. It's like I've learned that to be more successful and accomplish more, I must first slow down."
The paradox of profit-minded techies engaging in the realm of nonattachment is not lost on those shepherding these wired flocks. Marc Lesser wore the black robes of a Buddhist priest as director of the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center near Big Sur in the 1980s. "I literally didn't know what to do with the $60 monthly stipend I used to get," he said. Today, as an M.B.A. and chief executive of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, he is comfortable integrating money with mindfulness. "All business is about helping people in some way and you can't do that without focusing on success," he said. "The hope is that turning a profit can be done more wisely and compassionately."
Collaborating with neuroscience and psychology researchers at Stanford, Berkeley and Yale, Mr. Bejar made significant changes to the ways communication happens on Facebook. This year, the company introduced emoticons to capture a broader range of human feelings, along with a gentler formula for settling tension between users. Previously, someone tagged in an unfortunate Facebook photo could flag the image as offensive and hope the other person would remove it. Now, a form pops up with options like, "It's embarrassing," "It's inappropriate" and "It makes me sad," along with a polite request to take the photo down.