Of a Philosophical Nature: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The hero of the Odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the Pheacian youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by a song. He is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing areté. Areté implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency... or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself.

The Ghosts of Human Invention

The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton … and what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It’s a ghost! Mind has no matter or energy but they can't escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in the mind. numbers exist only in the mind. I don't get upset when scientists say that ghosts exist in the mind. it's that only that gets me. science is only in your mind too, it's just that that doesn't make it bad. or ghosts either.

Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Law of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts.

… we see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and Lincoln, on and on and on. Isaac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.

Phædrus’ “Church of Reason” Lecture

Phædrus’ “Church of Reason” Lecture

https://www.csun.edu/~dwm3265/Phaedrus_Church_of_Reason_Lecture.pdf

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig relates a lecture delivered by his alter-ego, Phædrus. At the time the lecture was written, Phædrus was struggling with a problem he had with his students’ perception of university. The University was at that time in danger of losing its accreditation and students seemed concerned that if it did, the university would cease to exist. The “Church of Reason” lecture was delivered by Phædrus to explain to them the true nature of university. One student remarked that the State Police would move onto campus to prevent the University from losing its accreditation. This made it clear to Phædrus that there was a fundamental misunderstanding of what comprises a University and the lecture was an attempt to explain the proper meaning of ‘University.’ The following is an excerpt from chapter 13 of the book.

The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It’s a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.

In addition to this state of mind, “reason,” there’s a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It owns property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures in the process.

But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all. It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.

Confusion continually occurs in people who fail to see this difference, he said, and think that control of the church buildings implies control of the church. They see professors as employees of the second university who should abandon reason when told to and take orders with no backtalk, the same way employees do in other corporations.

They see the second university, but fail to see the first. (Pirsig, 1999, p. 150).

Phædrus goes on to describe the role of the professor within the University through an analogy of a minister within a church.

After these explanations he returned to the analogy of the religious church. The citizens who build such a church and pay for it probably have in mind that they’re doing this for the community. A good sermon can put the parishioners in a right frame of mind for the coming week. Sunday school will help the children grow up right. The minister who delivers the sermon and directs the Sunday school understands these goals and normally goes along with them, but he also knows that his primary goals are not to serve the community. His primary goal is always to serve God. Normally there’s no conflict but occasionally one creeps in when trustees oppose the minister’s sermons and threaten reduction of funds. That happens.

A true minister, in such situations, must act as though he’d never heard the threats. His primary goal isn’t to serve the members of the community, but always god.

The primary goal of the Church of Reason, Phaedrus said, is always Socrates’ old goal of truth, in its ever-changing forms, as it’s revealed by the process of rationality. Everything else is subordinate to that. Normally this goal is in no conflict with the location goal of improving citizenry, but on occasion some conflict arises, as in the case of Socrates himself. It arises when trustees and legislators who’ve contributed large amounts of time and money to the location take points of view in opposition to the professors’ lectures of public statements. They can then lean on the administration by threatening to cut off funds if the professors don’t say what they want to hear. That happens too.

True churchmen in such situations must act as though they had never heard these threats. Their primary goal never is to serve the community ahead of everything else. Their primary goal is to serve, through reason, the goal of truth. (Pirsig, 1999, p. 151).

Other Excerpts

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.

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

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.

You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.

We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.

Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive

Is it hard? Not if you have the right attitudes. It’s having the right attitudes that’s hard.

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. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.

To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.

For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.

If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.

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.

But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.

We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility, it's right. If it disturbs you, it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.

Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than laziness is the real reason you find it hard to get started

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself.

It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.

The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.

The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.

You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.

When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.

To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that’s out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He’s likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he’s tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, he’s unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then *it* will be here. What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it *is* all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant.

And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good—
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn't mean much.

The doctrinal differences between Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.

What makes his world so hard to see clearly is not its strangeness but its usualness. Familiarity can blind you too.