NEC, a giant in the integration of computers and communications, is headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, which is itself the epicenter of everything high-tech and forward-looking. Here, in the fast lane of the information superhighway, you can feel the future brewing. The denizens of the cubicles, labs, and boardrooms are dreaming California dreams--of superconductors, electronic devices, and computer peripherals. Time wasted is time lost. Technology stops for no one.

But in a conference room in a corner of the building, a dozen people sit upright, their hands folded in front of them, their eyes half closed. They face the walls, and they breathe. And breathe. And breathe. "Notice where your mind is," says a soothing voice. "Bring your thoughts back to your breath."

The voice belongs to Les Kaye, a man in his sixties with a kind face and a head not far from clean-shaven. Kaye arrived in Silicon Valley even before Silicon Valley truly arrived. He is a thirty-two-year veteran of the technology wars, a former design engineer, salesman, and department manager at IBM. He is Silicon-to-the-bone. He is also a Zen priest, a Buddhist missionary of sorts, and Silicon Valley is his mission. Kaye discovered Zen Buddhism a decade after he immersed himself in the world of IBM, and on the surface the two cultures appeared so inherently opposite that their integration seemed impossible. But it took a spiritual journey for Kaye to stay put.

He went to work for IBM in 1956, just a few weeks after graduating from Cornell with an engineering degree. It was the company's heyday, and Kaye joined a team of engineers and technicians who were busy assembling and testing RAMAC, a revolutionary magnetic disk storage product that was the forerunner of the hard disks and floppies used in today's personal computers. He would remain with the company until his retirement in 1990, a stint interrupted only by two years in the army--and a couple of monastic sabbaticals. It was in 1961 that he came across The Way of Zen by Alan Watts. "I was fascinated to discover a dimension of living, an attitude about life, that I had not known before," Kaye recalls. "When I closed the book, I knew that my technically oriented, mainstream life was incomplete, that it alone could not provide the balance I was seeking."

By 1966, Kaye had begun attending meditation practice at a Zen center in Los Altos, which is now his hometown. Within five years, he was a Zen monk. Within seven, he was a head monk, or shuso. In 1979, he helped found a nonresidential Zen center in Mountain View, a Silicon Valley hub. He called it Kannon Do, which means Place of Compassion. For more than a decade he has been the center's abbot--its teacher and spiritual leader. "Don't try to cut off thoughts. Be gentle with them. When you notice a thought distracting you, let it slowly fade away," Kaye tells the dozen NEC employees after their half-hour of meditation has concluded. "When you've been doing some task, have you ever had the thought: 'I should be doing something else'? How do you feel?"

"Hurried," replies one employee. "Guilty," answers another. "Disturbed," says a third. Kaye smiles. "That's what we call multi-tasking."

Kaye understood from the beginning that the cultures of microchips and meditation appear to be polar opposites. One emphasizes the future, the other timelessness. One attempts to alter circumstances, the other to relate to them. One is driven by competition, the other by interdependence. But Kaye noticed that Zen and IBM encouraged many of the same qualities: integrity, self-discipline, attention to detail, a capacity for work. As he gradually became a Zen teacher, he also saw an opportunity to use Buddhism's ability to adapt to the beliefs and cultures it encounters. In Silicon Valley, he thinks he's found the right forum. "Silicon Valley is a unique kind of place," says Kaye. "There's a lot of stress, but there's also a lot of creativity and a willingness to try new ideas. That's part of the culture here. So they're not really polar opposites. Only in appearance."

In 1996, Kaye published Zen at Work (Three Rivers Press), explaining how he'd learned to incorporate his spiritual life into his workaday existence. He wrote, for instance, about how even our most mundane activities express life's inherent spirituality. He emphasized letting go of boundaries and self-oriented ideas: "Only when we do not try to obtain it can we have peace of mind." He discussed how Zen practice encourages us to "free ourselves from the competition of personalities."

Most important, he provided examples of how his Zen training smoothed out hard-edged relationships in the workplace and improved his reactions to stressful situations. "My new understanding of the meaning of success resulted in a change of priorities," he wrote. "Working ceased to be a means to an end, for gaining recognition and a more comfortable life as quickly as possible. Success was now feeling satisfaction in the ongoing process of the activity itself."

After receiving feedback from people all over the country, Kaye came to the realization that there are many others like him--either Zen adherents who are trying to express spiritual practice within the framework of careers and families, or simply people who could benefit from a daily dose of Zen. So he developed a program he calls Meditation at Work, which he has conducted everywhere from Apple and IBM to Netscape and Nortel.

Companies sign up for ten one-hour sessions and invite employees to attend. The workshops consist of a half-hour of meditation followed by a half-hour of group discussion on topics ranging from "the principles of awareness" to "the relationships of habits to work." Kaye has to tread carefully. He doesn't want to cheapen Zen by over-modernizing it, yet at the same time he doesn't want to put off companies that are reluctant to support specific spirituality. "I don't want to take this very ancient, very spiritual practice and subvert it to something convenient to the American marketplace. What I've done, I believe, is set aside the ceremonial aspects and even any discussion of spirituality. I've just focused on the practical benefit and expression of meditation," says Kaye. "Some people do it and call it Zen. Others do it and don't call it anything."

The hour is over, and the NEC employees prepare to return to work. Kaye smiles and offers a gentle reminder. "Remember, you can do this anywhere, anytime," he says. "You can sit in your office or your cubicle and watch your breath. Then, when you return to the task at hand, you'll be refreshed."

-- Brad Herzog '90

Published in Cornell Alumni Magazine. Used by permission.