Here are my highlights and notes:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Pirsig, Robert M.

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Part I

Note – Chapter 1 > Page 3 · Location 108

I have read this book before at least two times. Why read it again? I remember starting the sequel, Lila, which I do not think I finished. In Lila, Phaedrus uses an elaborate card system which seems very similar to the Zettlecasten method. I did a quick search and it does not seem that Pirsig related his method to Zettlecasten.

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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 .

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This makes sense in non-vacation travel as well. Not to worry about speed and be okay with going a little more slowly.

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

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a matter of small importance : how much one should maintain one’s own motorcycle . Note: how much should one maintain anything? Where should effort be placed?

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This is about an anti-technology bent with most people. The couple here goes to the rural to escape it. I found it in the Adirondacks and the Champlain Islands.

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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 a mountain or in the petals of a flower . To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha — which is to demean oneself . That is what I want to talk about in this Chautauqua .

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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 .

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We were caught in a warm front of which we had plenty of warning but which we didn’t understand .

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Evidently what I saw sloshing around was gas in the reserve tank which I had never turned on . I didn’t check it carefully because I assumed the rain had caused the engine failure . I didn’t understand then how foolish quick assumptions like that are . Now we are on a twenty – eight – horse machine and I take the maintenance of it very seriously .

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Why expose yourself to this vulnerability? Can you not experience where you are without it?

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I read this book the first time after some motorcycle experience in my late teens/early 20s. It is much different reading it after my second motorcycle period in my 50s and 60s.

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He was a knower of logic , the classical system – of – the – system which describes the rules and procedures of systematic thought by which analytic knowledge may be structured and interrelated .

Part II

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The overall name of these interrelated structures , the genus of which the hierarchy of containment and structure of causation are just species , is system . The motorcycle is a system . A real system .

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In GEB, does he discuss formal systems?

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The logical statements entered into the notebook are broken down into six categories : ( 1 ) statement of the problem , ( 2 ) hypotheses as to the cause of the problem , ( 3 ) experiments designed to test each hypothesis , ( 4 ) predicted results of the

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experiments , ( 5 ) observed results of the experiments and ( 6 ) conclusions from the results of the experiments .

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His letters from Korea are radically different from his earlier writing , indicating this same turning point . They just explode with emotion . He writes page after page about tiny details of things he sees : marketplaces , shops with sliding glass doors , slate roofs , roads , thatched huts , everything .

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They eat a picnic lunch and talk to one another and to him and the subject is ideographs and their relation to the world . He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty – six written characters with which they have been working . His friends nod and smile and eat the food they’ve taken from tins and say no pleasantly .

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He discovered that the science he’d once thought of as the whole world of knowledge is only a branch of philosophy ,

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goes . And so Phaedrus found in philosophy a natural continuation of the question that brought him to science in the first place , What does it all mean ? What’s the purpose of all this ?

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Kant he is less strange . For this eighteenth – century German philosopher he feels a respect that rises not out of agreement but out of appreciation for Kant’s formidable logical fortification of his position . Kant is always superbly methodical , persistent , regular and meticulous as he scales that great snowy mountain of thought concerning what is in the mind and what is outside the mind .

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To follow Kant one must also understand something about the Scottish philosopher David Hume .

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“ To travel is better than to arrive ”

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“ I’m from the factory too , ” I say “ and I know how instructions like this are put together . You go out on the assembly line with a tape recorder and the foreman sends you to talk to the guy he needs least , the biggest goof – off he’s got , and whatever he tells you — that’s the instructions . The next guy might have told you something completely different and probably better , but he’s too busy . ”

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I often wondered why instructions seemed so poor sometimes.

Part III

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As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin . This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion . Little children didn’t have it . It seemed to come later on , possibly as a result of school itself .

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But is imitation not how we learn? Is the real issue an inability to extend beyond the imitation?

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He could take the left horn and refute the idea that objectivity implied scientific detectability . Or , he could take the right horn , and refute the idea that subjectivity implies “ anything you like . ” Or he could go between the horns and deny that

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subjectivity and objectivity are the only choices .

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This refutation of scientific materialism , however , seemed to put him in the camp of philosophic idealism — Berkeley , Hume , Kant , Fichte , Schelling , Hegel , Bradley , Bosanquet —

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The title of this Chautauqua is “ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , ” not “ Zen and the Art of Mountain Climbing , ” and there are no motorcycles on the tops of mountains , and in my opinion very little Zen . Zen is the “ spirit of the valley , ” not the mountaintop . The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there . Let’s get out of here .

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“ Quality is shapeless , formless , indescribable .

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Sounds like the Tao.

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“ Now , to take that which has caused us to create the world , and include it within the world we have created , is clearly impossible .

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Godel incompleteness?

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That is why Quality cannot be defined . If we do define it we are defining something less than Quality itself . ”

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Again, is Quality the Tao?

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A whole new flood of philosophic associations came to mind . Hegel had talked like this , with his Absolute Mind . Absolute Mind was independent too , both of objectivity and subjectivity .

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Phaedrus remembered Hegel had been regarded as a bridge between Western and Oriental philosophy . The Vedanta of the Hindus , the Way of the Taoists , even the Buddha had been described as an absolute monism similar to Hegel’s philosophy .

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anywhere . It was the 2,400 – year – old Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu . He began to read through the lines he had read many times before , but this time he studied it to see if a certain substitution would work . He began to read and interpret it at the same time . He read : The quality that can be defined is not the Absolute Quality .

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What he had been talking about all the time as Quality was here the Tao ,

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His name was Jules Henri Poincaré .

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This is the zero moment of consciousness . Stuck . No answer . Honked . Kaput . It’s a miserable experience emotionally . You’re losing time . You’re incompetent . You don’t know what you’re doing . You should be ashamed of yourself . You should take the machine to a real mechanic who knows how to figure these things out .

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The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one , like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one , is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality . He has to care !

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This eternally dualistic subject – object way of approaching the motorcycle sounds right to us because we’re used to it .

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Very Zen

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And when you really understand dynamic reality you never get stuck . It has forms but the forms are capable of change .

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To put it in more concrete terms : If you want to build a factory , or fix a motorcycle , or set a nation right without getting stuck , then classical , structured , dualistic subject – object knowledge , although necessary , isn’t enough . You have to have some feeling for the quality of the work . You have to have a sense of what’s good . That is what carries you forward . This sense isn’t just something you’re born with , although you are born with it . It’s also something you can develop . It’s not just “ intuition , ” not just unexplainable “ skill ” or “ talent . ” It’s the direct result of contact with basic reality , Quality , which dualistic reason has in the past tended to conceal .

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After all , it’s exactly this stuckness that Zen Buddhists go to so much trouble to induce ; through koans , deep breathing , sitting still and the like . Your mind is empty , you

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have a “ hollow – flexible ” attitude of “ beginner’s mind . ”

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You are interested in what it does and why it’s doing it . You will ask functional questions .

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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

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center of it all .

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Buddhist?

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Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind . I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle .

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Anyway , the first technique for preventing the out – of – sequence – reassembly gumption trap is a notebook in which I write down the order of disassembly and note anything unusual that might give trouble in reassembly later on .

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The second technique for preventing the out – of – sequence – reassembly gumption trap is newspapers opened out on the floor of the garage on which all the parts are laid left – to – right and top – to – bottom in the order in which you read a page .

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Well , those were the commonest setbacks I can think of : out – of – sequence reassembly , intermittent failure and parts problems . But although setbacks are the commonest gumption traps they’re only the external cause of gumption loss . Time now to consider some of the internal gumption traps that operate at the same time .

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As the course description of gumptionology indicated , this internal part of the field can be broken down into three main types of internal gumption traps : those that block affective understanding , called “ value traps ” ; those that block cognitive understanding , called “ truth traps ” ; and those that block psychomotor behavior , called “ muscle traps . ” The value traps are by far the largest and the most dangerous group .

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away . If you just stop and put tools away neatly you will both find the tool and also scale down your impatience without wasting time or endangering the work .

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This low evaluation of the experiment which provided the mu answer isn’t justified . The mu answer is an important one . It’s told the scientist that the context of his question is too small for nature’s answer and that he must enlarge the context of the question . That is a very important answer ! His understanding of nature is tremendously improved by it , which was the purpose of the experiment in the first place .

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Here by far the most frustrating gumption trap is inadequate tools . Nothing’s quite so demoralizing as a tool hang – up .

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Buy good tools as you can afford them and you’ll never regret it .

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Apart from bad tools , bad surroundings are a major gumption trap . Pay attention to adequate lighting . It’s amazing the number of mistakes a little light can prevent .

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You want to know how to paint a perfect painting ? It’s easy . Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally . That’s the way all the experts do it . The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence . If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine , what trap avoidances , what gimmicks , can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh ? It all goes together .

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But if you’re a sloppy thinker six days a week and you really try to be sharp on the seventh , then maybe the next six days aren’t going to be quite as sloppy as the preceding six .

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

Part IV

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attempt . The leaders of the revolt were Robert Maynard Hutchins , who had become president of the University of Chicago ; Mortimer Adler , whose

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work on the psychological background of the law of evidence was somewhat similar to work being done at Yale by Hutchins ;

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Adler’s study of evidence , cross – fertilized by a reading of classics of the Western world , resulted in a conviction that human wisdom had advanced relatively little in recent times .

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He had no time for or interest in other people’s Great Books .

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I think it was Coleridge who said everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian . People who can’t stand Aristotle’s endless specificity of detail are natural lovers of Plato’s soaring generalities . People who can’t stand the eternal lofty idealism of Plato welcome the down – to – earth facts of Aristotle . Plato is the essential Buddha – seeker who appears again and again in each generation , moving onward and upward toward the “ one . ” Aristotle is the eternal motorcycle mechanic who prefers the “ many . ”

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What’s really demanded in the Church of Reason is not ability , but inability . Then you are considered teachable . A truly able person is always a threat .