Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I recently finished Robert Pirsig’s, 1974 Philosophical Fiction book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. 

I started the book as I was watching the Netflix series, “The Last Dance” where I researched some of Phil Jackson’s coaching style and Pirsig’s, “Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” was a book that he recommended to several of his players. I’m normally an avid reader but had been in a funk through the first stretch of COVID and this was a great book to re-kickstart my reading. 

I finished the book the week George Floyd was killed and as I tried to make sense of it all I found this quote from Pirsig very timeless:

“I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts it at the end and presumes the end is the beginning. Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

Snapshot: The book has a dual storyline where in one arc the narrator tells the story of taking his 11 year old son on a motorcycle trip from Minneapolis headed out to the west coast. In the other arc he explores philosophical discussions and deep self exploration. Some of my favorite parts of the book were the author’s descriptions of the pit-stops in small towns across Montana and Oregon and the joys of eating or sleeping after a long day's ride. In his philosophical discussions Pirsig explores the modern pursuit of “Pure Truths” tracing themes back to Greek Philosophers and proposing his own new theory of reality called “Quality.” 

General Notes & Quotes (Italics indicate direct quote from book):

• The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
• Another thing that depressed him was prescriptive rhetoric, which supposedly had been done away with but was still around. This was the old slap-on-the-fingers-if-your-modifiers-were-caught-dangling stuff. Correct spelling, correct punctuation, correct grammar. Hundreds of itsy-bitsy rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about.
• Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster 
• The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good and to be at one with this goodness as the work proceeds is to cultivate an inner quietness, a piece of mind so that goodness can shine through. 
• The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself.
• It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.
• Pirsig discusses the term gumption as the motivation to be passionate about something and “gumption traps” that can trip up your motivation.  
• Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going. If you haven’t got it there’s no way the motorcycle can possibly be fixed. But if you have got it and know how to keep it there’s absolutely no way in the whole world that motorcycle can keep from getting fixed. It’s bound to happen. Therefore the thing that must be monitored at all times and preserved before anything else is the gumption. “
• The idea of gumption to me encapsulated someone’s “Give a fuck factor.” What are the things that can keep your attention? Keep you focused? Rev your engine? 
• When Gumption is high people’s enthusiasm is high and they enter in the flow and the work seems effortless and the time flies. When the gumption falters work becomes harder and unfulfilling. 
• Gumption traps are things that deflate your motivation. These can be external events as well as internal circumstances. 
• "The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind ... is akin to that of the religious worshipper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart." Albert Einstein 
• “There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience.” Albert Einstein 
• “Tat Tvam Asi” A Sanskrit phrase, translated as "Thou art that.”  Everything you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided. 
• One of my favorite parts of the book was Pirsig’s discussion on Arête. 
• What moves the Greek warrior to deeds of heroism,” Kitto comments, “is not a sense of duty as we understand it — duty towards others: it is rather duty towards himself.  He strives after that which we translate ‘virtue’ but is in Greek arête, ‘excellence’ … we shall have much to say about arête. It runs through Greek life.
• Arête implies a respect of 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.
• That which we translate ‘virtue’ but is in Greek ‘excellence.’
• Kitto had more to say about this arête of the ancient Greeks.  ‘When we meet arête in Plato,’ he said, ‘we translate it ‘virtue’ and consequently miss all the flavor of it.  ‘Virtue,’ at least in modern English, is almost entirely a moral word; arête on the other hand, is used indifferently in all the categories, and simply means excellence.
• Quality is the "knife-edge" of experience, found only in the present, known or at least potentially accessible to all of "us" (cf. Plato's Phaedrus, 258d)
• At Axon the work we’re doing is on the knife’s-edge. In nearly every house or bar in America (and probably the world) as friends and family gather they drone on about all the world’s problems and in my experience in several settings, everyone offers up endless solutions for how if the world just did X,Y or Z the world would be a better place. One of my favorite quotes is Warren Buffett’s Noah Principle, “Predicting the Rain Doesn’t Count, Building an Ark Does.” What I love about the quote is that it captures the essence of converting “Thought into action.” Pirsig’s discussions on quality highlight several notable historical figures who have moved humanity forward by converting thought into action. That is the knife’s-edge. That is quality. Imagining a better version of the world isn’t enough. To make a difference one must convert that thought into action.