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

Book by Robert M. Pirsig · 28 quotes · Philosophy, Zen, Mountains

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

“DeWeese asks, 'Does this tie in with what you were doing on "Quality?"' 'It's the direct result of it,' I say. I remember something and look at DeWeese. 'Didn't you advise me to drop it?' 'I said no one had ever succeeded in doing what you were trying to do.' 'Do you think it's possible?' 'I don't know. Who knows?' His expression is really concerned. 'A lot of people are listening better these days. Particularly the kids. They're really listening... and not just at you- to you... to you. It makes all the difference.”

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“I want to talk about another kind of high country now in the world of thought, which in some ways, for me at least, seems to parallel or produce feelings similar to this, and call it the high country of the mind. If all of human knowledge, everything that’s known, is believed to be an enormous hierarchic structure, then the high country of the mind is found at the uppermost reaches of this structure in the most general, the most abstract considerations of all. Few people travel here. There’s no real profit to be made from wandering through it, yet like this high country of the material world all around us, it has its own austere beauty that to some people makes the hardships of traveling through it seem worthwhile. In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked, and to the answers proposed to these questions. The sweep goes on and on and on so obviously much further than the mind can grasp one hesitates even to go near for fear of getting lost in them and never finding one’s way out.”

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“Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to the amount they could say. It was a confidence building assignment too, because what they wrote, even though seemingly trivial, was nevertheless their own thing, not a mimicking of someone else’s.”

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“So we navigate mostly by dead reckoning, and deduction from what clues we find. I keep a compass in one pocket for overcast days when the sun doesn't show directions and have the map mounted in a special carrier on top of the gas tank where I can keep track of miles from the last junction and know what to look for. With those tools and a lack of pressure to 'get somewhere' it works out fine and we just about have America all to ourselves.”

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“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.”

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“It should be inserted here parenthetically that there's a school of mechanical thought which says I shouldn't be getting into a complex assembly I don't know anything about. I should have training or leave the job to a specialist. Thats a self-serving school of mechanical eliteness I'd like to see wiped out. [...] You're at a disadvantage the first time around it may cost you a little more because of parts you accidentally damage, and it will almost undoubtedly take a lot more time, but the next time around you're way ahead of the specialist. You, with gumption, have learned the assembly the hard way and you've a whole set of good feelings about it that he's unlikely to have.”

Do It YourselfSense Of AccomplishmentDiyMotorcyclesMechanicsMotorcycle Maintenance
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“Finally, if you're as exasperated as I am by the parts problem and have some money to invest, you can take up the really fascinating hobby of machining your own parts. [...] With the welding equipment you can build up worn surfaces with better than original metal and then machine it back to tolerance with carbide tools. [...] If you can't do the job directly you can always make something that will do it. The work of machining a part is very slow, and some parts, such as ball bearings, you're never going to machine, but you'd be amazed at how you can modify parts designs so that you can make them with your equipment, and the work isn't nearly a slow or frustrating as a wait for some smirking parts man to send away to the factory. And the work is gumption building, not gumption destroying. To run a cycle with parts in it you've made yourself gives you a special feeling you can't possibly get from strictly store-bought parts.”

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“On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment. You're always being fooled, you're always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage. If you know enough mechanics to think of them as a group, and your observations coincide with mine, I think you'll agree that mechanics tend to be rather modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they're not quiet and modest at first, the works seems to make them that way. And skeptical. Attentive, but skeptical. But not egotistic. There's no way to bullshit your way into looking good on a mechanical repair job, except with someone who doesn't know what you're doing.”

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“When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. I just want to get at it slowly, but carefully and thoroughly, with the same attitude I remember was present just before I found that sheared pin. It was that attitude that found it, nothing else.”

AttitudeTake It EasySlow And SteadyDon T RushDon T Hurry
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“One student laid it wide open when she said with complete candor, “Of course you can’t eliminate the degree and grading system. After all, that’s what we’re here for.” She spoke the complete truth. The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a little hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose.”

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“Bill arrives with a grin about something. Sure, he's got some jets for my machine and knows right were they are. I'll have to wait a second though. He's got to close a deal out in back on some Harley parts. I go with him out in a shed in back and see he is selling a whole Harley machine in used parts, except for the frame, which the customer already has. He is selling them all for $125. Not a bad price at all. Coming back I comment, "He'll know something about motorcycles before he gets those together." Bill laughs. "And that's the best way to learn, too.”

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“The student’s biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and- whip grading, a mule mentality which said, "If you don’t whip me, I won’t work." He didn’t get whipped. He didn’t work. And the cart of civilization, which he supposedly was being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a little slower without him. This is a tragedy, however, only if you presume that the cart of civilization, "the system," is pulled by mules. This is a common, vocational, "location" point of view, but it’s not the Church attitude. The Church attitude is that civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men. The purpose of abolishing grades and degrees is not to punish mules or to get rid of them but to provide an environment in which that mule can turn into a free man.”

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“But technology is simply the making of things and the making of things can't by its own nature be ugly or there would be no possibility for beauty in the arts, which also include the making of things. Actually a root word of technology, techne, originally meant "art." The ancient Greeks never separated art from manufacture in their minds, and so never developed separate words for them.”

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“I've said you can actually see this fusion in skilled mechanics and machinists of a certain sort, and you can see it in the work they do. To say that they are not artists is to misunderstand the nature of art. They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they're doing, but more than this—there's a kind of inner peace of mind that isn't contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there's no leader and no follower. The material and the craftsman's thoughts change together in a progression of smooth, even changes until his mind is at rest at the exact instant the material is right.”

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“Correct spelling, correct punctuation, correct grammar. Hundreds of rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about. It was all table manners, not derived from any sense of kindness or decency or humanity, but originally from an egotistic desire to look like gentlemen and ladies. Gentlemen and ladies had good table manners and spoke and wrote grammatically. It was what identified one with the upper classes. In Montana, however, it didn’t have this effect at all. It identified one, instead, as a stuck-up Eastern ass.”

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“Sonunda kendini yüceltmeyi amaç edinen her çaba felaketle sonlanmaya yazgılıdır. Bir dağa, ne kadar büyük olduğunuzu kanıtlamak için tırmanıyorsanız, hemen hemen hiçbir zaman sağlayamazsınız bunu. Tırmansanız bile içi boş bir zafer olur bu. zaferi sürdürmek için kendinizi tekrar tekrar başka yollarla kanıtlamak, sahte bir imajı tekrar tekrar oluşturmak; peşinizde bu imajın doğru olmadığı ve birinin bunu anlayacağı korkusuyla sonsuza dek bu imajı sağlamak zorundasınızdır. Bu çıkar yol değildir.”

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“If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then you may be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas. The solution to the problem often at first seems unimportant or undesirable, but the state of stuckness allows it, in time, to assumes its true importance. It seemed small because our previous rigid evaluation which led to the stuckness made it small. But now consider the fact that no matter how hard you try to hang on to it, this stuckness is bound to disappear. Your mind will naturally and freely move toward a solution. Unless you are a real master at staying stuckk you can't prevent this. The fear of stuckness is needless because the longer you stay stuck the more you see the Quality-reality that gets you unstuck every time. What's really been getting you stuck is the running from the stuckness through the cars of your train of knowledge looking for a solution that is out in front of the train. Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding.”

PhilosophyThinking ProcessBeing StuckGetting Stuck In Your Head
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“That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. There's no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone's mind [...] I've noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this—that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with given shapes—pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts—all of them fixed and inviolable., and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forger work or welding sees "steel" as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine here. These shapes are all of someone's mind. That's important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there.”

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“Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you’ll see the difference. The craftsman isn’t ever following a single line of instruction. He’s making decisions as he goes along. For that reason he’ll be absorbed and attentive to what he’s doing even though he doesn’t deliberately contrive this. His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony. He isn’t following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are changing together in a progression of changes until his mind’s at rest at the same time the material’s right.”

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