Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: What is essential to understand at this point is that until now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form and substance. Those divisions are just dialectical inventions that came later. The modern mind sometimes tends to balk at the thought of these dichotomies being inventions and says, "Well, the divisions were there for the Greeks to discover," and you have to say, "Where were they? Point to them!" And the modern mind gets a little confused and wonders what this is all about anyway, and still believes the divisions were there.
But they weren't, as Phædrus said. They are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to us to be real because we are in that mythos. But in reality they are just as much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic Gods they replaced.
Robert M. Pirsig: Thing
Robert M. Pirsig was American writer and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on thing.
Variant: To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 17
Context: 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 are no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an 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 mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. <!-- p. 205
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 25
Context: 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. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. <!-- p. 304
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30
Context: It is an immortal dialogue, strange and puzzling at first, but then hitting you harder and harder, like truth itself. What Phædrus has been talking about as Quality, Socrates appears to have described as the soul, self-moving, the source of all things. There is no contradiction. There never really can be between the core terms of monistic philosophies. The One in India has got to be the same as the One in Greece. If it's not, you've got two. The only disagreements among the monists concern the attributes of the One, not the One itself. Since the One is the source of all things and includes all things in it, it cannot be defined in terms of those things, since no matter what thing you use to define it, the thing will always describe something less than the One itself. The One can only be described allegorically, through the use of analogy, of figures of imagination and speech. Socrates chooses a heaven-and-earth analogy, showing how individuals are drawn toward the One by a chariot drawn by two horses.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30
Context: It is an immortal dialogue, strange and puzzling at first, but then hitting you harder and harder, like truth itself. What Phædrus has been talking about as Quality, Socrates appears to have described as the soul, self-moving, the source of all things. There is no contradiction. There never really can be between the core terms of monistic philosophies. The One in India has got to be the same as the One in Greece. If it's not, you've got two. The only disagreements among the monists concern the attributes of the One, not the One itself. Since the One is the source of all things and includes all things in it, it cannot be defined in terms of those things, since no matter what thing you use to define it, the thing will always describe something less than the One itself. The One can only be described allegorically, through the use of analogy, of figures of imagination and speech. Socrates chooses a heaven-and-earth analogy, showing how individuals are drawn toward the One by a chariot drawn by two horses.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices—TV, jets, freeways and so on—but I hope it's been made plain that the real evil isn't the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It's the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil. That's why I went to so much trouble to show how technology could be used to destroy the evil. A person who knows how to fix motorcycles—with Quality—is less likely to run short of friends than one who doesn't. And they aren't going to see him as some kind of object either. Quality destroys objectivity every time.
“You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other.”
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 1
Context: 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.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30
Context: For three days and three nights, Phædrus stares at the wall of the bedroom, his thoughts moving neither forward nor backward, staying only at the instant. His wife asks if he is sick, and he does not answer. His wife becomes angry, but Phædrus listens without responding. He is aware of what she says but is no longer able to feel any urgency about it. Not only are his thoughts slowing down, but his desires too. And they slow and slow, as if gaining an imponderable mass. So heavy, so tired, but no sleep comes. He feels like a giant, a million miles tall. He feels himself extending into the universe with no limit.
He begins to discard things, encumbrances that he has carried with him all his life. He tells his wife to leave with the children, to consider themselves separated. Fear of loathsomeness and shame disappear when his urine flows not deliberately but naturally on the floor of the room. Fear of pain, the pain of the martyrs is overcome when cigarettes burn not deliberately but naturally down into his fingers until they are extinguished by blisters formed by their own heat. His wife sees his injured hands and the urine on the floor and calls for help.
But before help comes, slowly, imperceptibly at first, the entire consciousness of Phædrus begins to come apart — to dissolve and fade away. Then gradually he no longer wonders what will happen next. He knows what will happen next, and tears flow for his family and for himself and for this world.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
“What is good, Phædrus, and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30
The quote is from section 258d of the dialogue Phædrus (tr. Benjamin Jowett).
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Context: A single thought begins to grow in his mind, extracted from something he read in the dialogue Phædrus. "And what is written well and what is written badly—need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?"
What is good, Phædrus, and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 26
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Lila (1991)
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 7
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 8
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
These were the famous teachers of "wisdom," the Sophists of ancient Greece.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 8
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Afterword (1984)