After staying for seven months, Jobs left India
[48] and returned to the US ahead of Daniel Kottke.
[45] Jobs had changed his appearance; his head was shaved and he wore traditional Indian clothing.
[49][50] During this time, Jobs experimented with
psychedelics, later calling his
LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life".
[51][52] He also became a serious practitioner of
Zen Buddhism, engaged in lengthy
meditation retreats at the
Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the oldest
Sōtō Zen monastery in the US.
[53] He considered taking up monastic residence at
Eihei-ji in Japan, and maintained a lifelong appreciation for Zen.
[54] Jobs would later say that people around him who did not share his
countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.
[51]