JP | EN

Hackers, Researchers,
and Zen Mind

Written: August 1, 2025

Note: English quotations are kept as they are, while Japanese quotations are translated into English.

Introduction

Since entering the field of information science at university, I have been inspired by researchers and hackers.* I became interested in their cultures and customs and began reading books about them. Along the way, I started to sense some similarities with Buddhism, especially Zen, which I happened to be interested in at the time. I found myself drawn to the ways of living and thinking they seemed to share. Here, I would like to bring together some of my observations and thoughts.

* I use “hacker” in the broad sense of a software hacker, not a cracker who engages in malicious activities.

Syusho-Itto

In Buddhism, practice is generally understood as a means of attaining enlightenment, but the Soto school takes a somewhat different view. High School Ethics describes seated meditation, or Zazen, as follows:

“The practice of Zazen was not a means of achieving enlightenment. Devoting oneself to practice itself was nothing other than the realization of enlightenment.”

Similarly, A Guide to Japanese Buddhism explains Zazen in the Soto school this way:

“When practicing Zazen, one simply sits silently, thinking of nothing and seeking not even enlightenment.”

In other words, Zen makes no distinction between ends and means. We usually choose and carefully examine the means by which we will achieve a goal. The two are often clearly separated, and I frequently sense an expectation that we should set ambitious goals and pursue them through detailed, reliable methods. Syusho-Itto is a different way of thinking.

This can be difficult to picture, so let me give a concrete example. Imagine a student preparing for an entrance examination. He sets himself the goal of getting a good score, then buys study guides and studies as a means of achieving it. According to the Soto teaching, the goal of getting a good score and the means of studying should not be separated. Studying is itself also the goal. I think this is close to that feeling when studying mathematics for an entrance exam becomes enjoyable in its own right (To me...). The Work of a Scientist describes a similar aspect of scientific research:

“Just as the purpose of taking a train is to reach a destination rather than to ride the train itself, unless you are a railway enthusiast, the purpose of science education must be to invite people into the world of science. Yet just as driving can be enjoyable in itself, scientific research can itself become the goal.”

Hackers, too, seem to draw little distinction between ends and means. The remarkable invention of Linux grew out of Linus Torvalds’s curiosity, and Just for Fun describes how he has continued developing it, steadily and creatively, for the sheer enjoyment of it. Linux did not begin as an ambitious project to create a major operating system. He posted the following message on Minix newsgroups in 1991:

“I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.”

The act is not justified only by the result it produces.

Facing Yourself

Research always calls for originality, which is one measure of a paper’s quality. At NeurIPS, the criteria for assessing a paper’s strengths and weaknesses include originality, quality, clarity, and significance. The Work of a Scientist expresses the importance of individuality in research as follows:

“It is by being thoroughly individual that originality, the most important thing in science, emerges.”

Shinichiro Tomonaga also said this about originality:

“If I have a principle, it is not to do the same thing as other people.”

Personally, I find that research questions and ideas for new methods often come to me while I am walking or lost in thought. I think this is itself an effort to discover something by facing myself. Hakuin’s Song of Zazen, often chanted in Zen Buddhism, has these lines:

“Apart from sentient beings, there is no Buddha. Unaware of what is near, how vainly they seek it far away.”

I believe Buddhist practice is fundamentally rooted in looking inward. What one gains through practice is mainly an understanding of oneself and a way of cultivating the words and actions that shape how one lives and thinks. Fundamentally, I do not think it is about learning how to change other people.

I also sense a similar commitment to self-improvement among hackers. Even when engineers belong to a company, developing their own technical abilities seems to matter most to them. The Linux Revolution describes how creativity arising from within is essential to a hacker. How to Become a Hacker also says:

“to be a hacker you have to get a basic thrill from solving problems, sharpening your skills, and exercising your intelligence.”

The word “thrill” stands out to me. Cultivating one’s curiosity and following it honestly seems to be part of a hacker’s nature. I also think this suggests that people who can reflect inwardly are well suited to becoming hackers.

Weekdays and Days Off

The Linux Revolution describes the hacker work ethic as “turning Friday into Sunday.” The idea is that hackers are motivated by creativity, with neither work nor leisure at the center. To me, this is not leisure defined in relation to work, but both work and leisure defined in relation to the enjoyment of life. The book puts it this way:

“Hackers do not feel that leisure is automatically more meaningful than working time. The appeal of either depends on how it is realized. From the perspective of a meaningful life, the entire work–leisure dichotomy must be abandoned. As long as we are living either for work or for leisure, we are not even truly living. Meaning lies in neither work nor leisure. It arises from the nature of the activity itself. From passion. From social value. From creativity.”

For monks in Zen training, there is not even a distinction between rest and practice, let alone a separate category of leisure. As the saying “everything is Zen” suggests, being a Zen monk means maintaining the spirit of Zen at all times. Buddhism has the term joju, which literally means “always being there.” In Zen, many everyday sounds are considered disturbances to the mind, and eating, cleaning, and even sleeping are all forms of practice. I think this continuity is deeply valued, and that this is what Zen is in the first place.

Naturally, then, there are no Sundays off, nor would there be an exception allowing alcohol only on Sundays. I suspect that they may not even have a concept of “work” as a separate category. I see a similar outlook in many researchers, too, whether that is good or bad: they seem to enjoy research on weekdays and days off alike. The Work of a Scientist describes this as follows:

“Researchers captivated by their research often become absent-mindedly absorbed in thought, whether they are in the laboratory, back at home, or even sharing a meal with their family.”

I feel that many people find lasting joy and meaning in devoting themselves to what they love and feel called to do in life, without distinguishing between weekdays and holidays, or between work and time off.

Liking, Disliking, Emptiness, and Nothingness

In research, loving what you do seems to be regarded as the highest virtue. Nobel laureates often quote the Japanese saying that you become good at what you love, suggesting that you must love something to accomplish anything in it. Yet I sometimes feel that even this is absent from Zen. If liking something is necessary to keep doing it, what motivates monks in training?

When I consider what sustains people who find joy in life, the single word “love” feels somehow insufficient. Saying that they are “madly in love” with what they do also seems quite far from the mark. Or perhaps they themselves are forcing that feeling into the word “love”. Whether it is work, study, club activities, or anything else, people may dislike something just as much as they like it. Those who throw themselves wholeheartedly into life seem drawn to something mysterious, almost without realizing that it gives their lives meaning. I wonder whether this is what emptiness and nothingness are.

The Heart Sutra contains the phrase “no form, no feeling, perception, mental formations, or consciousness.” It refers to the emptiness of the five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. To me, it suggests that even examining whether we like or dislike something may be beside the point. I cannot say for certain, but I feel that emptiness might be the state of being so absorbed in something that we do not even think about whether we like it.

If we take it for granted that we must love our work, it follows that we should quit if we dislike it. But everything has many different sides, and the activity itself is a journey. If continuing that journey feels meaningful, perhaps whether we like or dislike it does not matter.

Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology describes academic research at universities and other institutions as “intellectual and creative activity arising from researchers’ freely conceived ideas and desire to pursue research.” Neither ends nor means are explicitly specified. The feeling of loving something has neither an end nor a means; I feel that it is, in itself, an extraordinarily pure source of activity. I imagine hackers also have a pure mind of coding and a profound respect for creativity in that sense.

Afterthought: Something I have been thinking about a lot lately: perhaps loving something means being able to keep doing it quietly and steadily, without asking what the point is...

Living in the Present

The idea that “the means become the end” is at the heart of practice in Soto Zen: Syusho-Itto. I see goal-oriented thinking as a contrasting approach. You define a goal clearly, then specify precise means of achieving it. I think Ichiro Suzuki and Shohei Ohtani are what we might call visionaries who think this way. In his elementary school graduation essay, Ichiro set himself the goal of becoming a Major League Baseball player and laid out detailed steps toward it. Ohtani also created a diagram for working toward his goals when he was young. In a TED Talk, Linus expresses his own outlook in a way that illustrates the contrast between these two approaches:

“I am not a visionary. I do not have five-year plan. I’m an engineer. […] I’m looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that’s right in front of me before I fall in. This is the kind of person I am.”

In Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years, the hacker Peter Norvig laments how people rush to learn programming languages and explains that acquiring expertise in any field takes about ten years. I think this expresses the true spirit of taking on challenges that hackers possess, and one of their virtues. I had also vaguely sensed a similar culture among researchers. Tsuyoshi Mori wrote in Youth Is a Time for Worrying:

“When you are young, you decide things like ‘Science isn’t for me’ or ‘I have no artistic sense.’ Or you decide that you can only relate to people in a certain way, or that you will spend your life with a certain kind of person. In a sense, making those decisions is easy. You have settled on a pattern for living. But that framework gradually confines you. Even if you make it fairly broad, it gets narrower over time. If, instead, you change course, saying ‘This looks interesting too,’ your world gradually expands. The trade-off is uncertainty and instability: who knows what the future will bring? If you can live with that, I think that is fine.”

I think it would be wonderful if affection for the things that interest us now could sweep away the anxiety about the future that is so common during a PhD. The Work of a Scientist also quotes Tomonaga on the shortest path in research:

“My experience in the natural sciences teaches me that there are no shortcuts to anything. To keep building, one thing at a time, tirelessly and without losing interest: I believe this is the surest method and the fastest way to reach one’s goal.”

I think hackers, researchers, and Zen monks share a way of living with ambition, hope, and delight in life. They live fully in the present. What they seem to have in common is giving their utmost to whatever is in front of them, without dwelling on its purpose. The following passage from Youth captures this quality beautifully:

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child‐like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.

Closing Thoughts

Lately, I often find myself thinking that these must be the people we describe as having a sparkle in their eyes. When I reflect on their individual journeys through life, I am struck by how beautiful their outlook can be. I hope that someday I can become someone like that, too.

References