“We don't usually see that there's a third possible logical term equal to yes and no, which is capable of explaining our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don't even have a term for it, so I'll have to use the Japanese "Mu." Mu means no thing, like quality, it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, no class, not one, not zero, not yes, not no. It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is an error and should not be given. Un-ask the question is what it says. Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer.” PhilosophyZenBuddha NatureNo ThingBinary ThinkingMu Author:Robert Prisig
“At present we’re snowed under with an irrational expansion of blind data-gathering in the sciences because there’s no rational format for any understanding of scientific creativity. At present we are also snowed under with a lot of stylishness in the arts … thin art … because there’s very little assimilation or extension into underlying form. We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge, and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all. And the result is not just bad, it is ghastly. The time for real reunification of art and technology is really long overdue.” ArtPhilosophyScienceQualityTechnologyUnityZen Author:Robert Prisig
“The mountains of achievement are quality discovered in one direction only, and are relatively meaningless and often unattainable unless taken together with the ocean trenches of self-awareness” PhilosophyAchievementSelf AwarenessZenPeace Of Mind Author:Robert Prisig
“That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one's doing. When one has this feeling then he also sees the inverse side of caring - quality itself.” PhilosophyQualityCaringZen Author:Robert Prisig
“You point to something as having quality and the quality seems to go away.” PhilosophyQualityZenImpermanence Author:Robert Prisig
“The inability of science to grasp quality as an object of inquiry makes it impossible for science to provide a scale of values.” PhilosophyScienceQualityZen Author:Robert Prisig
“And now I began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when man gained power to understand rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth - but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.” PhilosophyTruthScienceZenOnenessLost KnowledgeDevil S Bargain Author:Robert Prisig