Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert M Pirsig, “Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An inquiry into values”  William Morrow & Co., 1974, pps. 418

Robert Pirsig was born in 1928.  He studied chemistry and philosophy (B.A., 1950) and journalism (M.A., 1953) at the University of Minnesota and also attended Benares Hindu University in India, where he studied Oriental philosophy.  Pirsig suffered a nervous breakdown and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals between 1961 and 1963. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression as a result of an evaluation conducted by psychoanalysts, and was treated with ECT on numerous occasions, which he himself talks about in this autobiographical book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

The author took a summer motorcycle trip with his eleven year old son from Minnesota to California and the reader accompanies them.  Actually, we are taken on two journeys: the actual trip with sights and interactions with his son, as well as the philosophical trip of the authors’ thoughts of his recollection of when he went insane looking for the concept of Quality.  His young son exhibits troubling symptoms of possible mental disturbances of his own.  (Ten years after this motorcycle trip, the son is killed by muggers in San Francisco).

Here is one of my favorite excerpts from this book, which I think is a metaphor for life.  "Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you're no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountains which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow."  After I retired I became so good at conforming to his above quoted mantra, I had to join an exercise club to get any useful exercise.   There are no leaves, and rocks there—just treadmills, cycle devices, and weights—nothing to detract my attention; I don’t count my Ipod and the podcasts I listen to.  Exercise without scenery is boring.

My Notes:

Pg. 12:  You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other.  In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV.  You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.  On a cycle the frame is gone.  You’re completely in contact with it all...and the sense of presence is overwhelming.  That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on,  it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.  (Yet, I once met a fella that had fallen asleep on a motorcycle—go figure).

Secondary roads are the best, state highways are next. Freeways are the worst.  We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.  Roads free of billboards, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where people look from their porches to see who it is. 

The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away.

Pg. 70:  The author divides human understanding into two kinds - classical and romantic.  "The classical mode proceeds by reason and by laws. The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is to bring order out of chaos.  The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, and intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate.  Motorcycle riding is romantic while motorcycle maintenance is purely classic."  The problem is that most people operate mostly in one mode or the other and, consequently, tend to misunderstand and underestimate those in the other mode. What we need is a way of looking at the world which unites the two understandings (or at least helps them to appreciate each other).

Pg. 82:  We can never be conscious of all that goes on around us because our minds would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think.  From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never that same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it.

Pg. 116:  Scientific truths of the twentieth century seem to have a much shorter life-span than those of the last century because scientific activity is now much greater.  What shortens the life-span of the existing truth is the volume of hypotheses offered to replace it; the more the hypotheses, the shorter the time span of the truth.  It is the scientific method itself that is causing the number of hypotheses to grow.  The more you look, the more you see.  Instead of selecting one truth from a multitude you are increasing the multitude.  What this means logically is that as you try to move toward unchanging truth through the application of scientific method, you actually do not move toward it at all.  You move away from it!  It is your application of scientific method that is causing it to change!  (This, I think, is nonsense as each “truth” leads to more profound and more accurate “truths”.).

Pg. 152:  You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in.  No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow.  They know it’s going to rise tomorrow.  When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.

Pg. 234:  The reduction ad absurdum form of argument.  This form of argument rests on the truth that if the inevitable conclusions from a set of premises are absurd then it follows logically that at least one of the premises that produced them is absurd.

Pg. 250:  People differ about Quality, not because Quality is different, but because people are different in terms of experience. 

Pg. 297:  So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings.  When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally.  Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts.  Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.  (This is experience when riding a motorcycle on roads with no traffic, lots of hills and turns…etc).

Pg 365:  Dialectic generally means “of the nature of the dialogue,” which is a conversation between two persons.  Nowadays it means logical argumentation.  It involves a technique of cross-examination, by which truth is arrived at.  It’s the mode of discourse of Socrates in the Dialogues of Plato.  Plato believed the dialectic was the sole method by which the truth was arrived at.  (this is before the scientific method, of course).

Pg. 384:  "Quality is the continuing stimulus which causes us to create the world in which we live." And, "Man is the measure of all things. Man is not the source of all things. Nor is he the passive observer of all things. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things."

Pg. 390:  When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes.  The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.  (I find many people forget this when they write letters to the editor for publication.)