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

A little about the author, Robert Pirsig…

He was born in 1928 and is best known for this book. He had a very high IQ of 170 and skipped several grades before entering the University of Minnesota to study biochemistry. He was more interested in science for the science, though, not as a career. He left school for a time and served in the military in Korea before returning to U of M and finished a BA in philosophy, before attending Banaras Hindu University in India studying Eastern philosophy.

In 1954 he married Nancy Ann James and they had two children, Chris and Thodore, before divorcing in 1978. He married Wendy Kimball the same year.

Pirsig’s son, Chris, was stabbed to death outside the San Francisco Zen Center in 1979, something that affected him deeply. When his second wife became pregnant in 1980, they had decieded to abort it, being he was his 50’s and thought it was really to late in life to start raising another child. But something came over him, thinking of Chris, and suddenly it felt wrong. They decieded not to abort and had a daughter, Nell.

‘Zen’ seems to a thinly disguised biography, it is told in the first person and many of the events that happen to the main character, happened to Pirsig as well. He did have a mental breakdown and was in and out of mental institutions between 1960 and 1963, where he had shock treatments. The main character also has mental problems, that by the end of the book have caused a real problem. The main characters son’s name is also Chris, the only one who believes in his father.

“You’re not very brave, are you? Chris says. “No,” I answer. “But you’d be astonished at how smart I am.”

This is said by Chris to his father while hiking. A small excursion they took off of the motorcycle. And I’ve got to tell you, I have felt like that so many times. Everytime I’m somewhere I get the opportunity to do something scary but amazing, once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing—-I end up standing there thinking about if I do it, it could go wrong and I could die. Even though I just watched somebody else do it, I always wonder about how smart they are in comparison to me and that’s why there were able to do it without hesitating while I stand there shaking and anazlying it to death…????

“Numbers exist only in the mind….”Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It’s all a ghost…”

In school, I was in all those ‘gifted’ classes, except math. I was in the ‘wear sandals so you can count past ten’ class. I have NEVER understood math, although I was pretty good at colouring in graph paper during that part of the year.

I never understood how letters could be added in to a subject that we all know is made up of numbers.

And the biggest problem teachers always had with me was me asking “WHY?” all the time…it’s not one of those subjects where you get any other answer except “Because” I have always felt math was just made up and that the teacher was lieing to me, and now I know why. It WAS in their imaginations that a+b=c

I KNEW IT ALL ALONG!!!!

“Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere.”

Like I said, I read this book while I was traveling and when I read this, all I could think to myself was “YES!” Unless traveling for a specific purpose, like to visit someone or for an event that I have to go to, when I travel I never have an itinerary. I always just go! And that’s how they were traveling in “Zen” They did have one specific place they had to be to visit some friends-but they didn’t have any reservations at hotels they had to make on time. And that’s just the best way to travel I think!!! Just go and experience.

I had meant to write about these book each day as I read it but ended up taking it with me for holiday. I read it in Koln, Germany and then into Brussels, Belgium. Back across Germany to Berlin and then Munich and finished up on my home to Baumholder, Germany. I hadn’t bothered to reserve seats on the ICE trains when I made my reservations and ended up sitting in the hallway for nearly the entire trip. My husband desribed it as ‘traveling on the Titanic in steerage’ You’re going the same wonderful places everyone with seats are—-but you have a lot more fun in the hallways being as loud and as stretched out as you want! But sitting next to the door on a train across Germany, with the window in the door showing it whizzing, reading ‘Zen’ was a wonderful experience. I can’t imagine reading it any other way but during a road trip, or while traveling. It is one of the main themes of the trip, and that is what the characters are doing while discovering and seeing new things, sites, weather, experiencing and discovering things about themselves that they wouldn’t have found any other way. And even though this is a somewhat thick book, the copy of it shown above is compact and easily fit in my pack, and into my purse during the day.

A definete to take along the next time you go traveling!!!!