Zen and the Art of Motorbicycle Maintenance

The search feature using 'advanced search' is part of the forum software I believe, while 'google custom search' I think offers a broader range of SEO type hits on a given topic. Just now playing with both, the former offered little on the topic while the latter offers pages and pages where the topic gets mentioned.

Excellent. I've used the advanced search several times, usually as a date filter for when I'm looking for current information. A lot has changed since 2008.

Regarding the book, it appears Pirsig chose the title because the book was written right after the hippie thing, so he knew "Zen" would catch people's attention. But again, the book has almost nothing to do with Zen. Actually, its roots are in Greek philosophy. Pirsig was looking to reconcile technology, and, well, art! (My words, not his.)
 
Unless you really get into Zen 100% all you can deduce about it winds up as a superficial.
Roughrider wrote "A Zen "master" would never figure out why an engine didn't work. "
I disagree. Zen is more about being completely natural as opposed to being contrived. It is not really about being "simple". If it is in your nature to analyze things in depth then doing so would be a zen experience for you. If wrenching comes natural to you then doing so is a zen experience. In the book the main character enjoyed delving into the mechanics of the bike while his friends did not. He was in tune with his natural impulses and so was "Zen". The book really was about Zen without ever really talking about it. In ancient Zen literature there is the idea of "stinking of Zen" by excessively talking and thinking about it without really embodying it. To realize your true self and live it completely is Zen.
 
Zen is more about being completely natural as opposed to being contrived. It is not really about being "simple". If it is in your nature to analyze things in depth then doing so would be a zen experience for you. If wrenching comes natural to you then doing so is a zen experience. In the book the main character enjoyed delving into the mechanics of the bike while his friends did not. He was in tune with his natural impulses and so was "Zen". The book really was about Zen without ever really talking about it. In ancient Zen literature there is the idea of "stinking of Zen" by excessively talking and thinking about it without really embodying it. To realize your true self and live it completely is Zen.

You are persuasive. I stand corrected. Maybe there's more Zen in the book than I thought. I've been reading more and seeing that Pirsig does stress the correct attitude, and this attitude is calm and peaceful. Certainly I have learned that when I get exasperated with wrenching, it is time for a cup of tea and a sigh. Then, it is best to just look at things. Inevitably, when I have calmed completely down, I go, "Ah HAH! I wonder if ..."

The work then tends to go smoothly. Even if my theory is wrong, at least I will find out I am wrong, and that is quite useful.
 
Part II

I had planned on doing this thread in several parts. I was curious to see if a deeply philosophic discussion of motorbikes would pique anyone's interests, and I thought Pirsig's book would make a good point of departure. I am not at all sure I've suceeded with either, but I like to finish things, so interesting or not, here goes...

Earlier, I mentioned Pirsig's take on the Classic/Romantic split. A bit later he suggests that this has a philosophic base in the split between Western and Asian philosophy. Western is rational; Asian is aesthetic. Or so it is said.

Next, he strikes at the core of the split, citing Hume's postulate that since without perception, we cannot know anything of the universe; thus, according to the purest logic, the universe cannot exist outside our perception. This, of course, disagrees with common sense, even though logical. It was not until Kant that Hume was successfully refuted. Kant argued that there do indeed exist perceptions that do not depend on external sense data, like time and space.

This perception of something undefined yet still emphatically real is the springboard into the heart of ZAAMM: Quality.

Everyone knows that quality exists, but what is it?

As a word, it means, "having value, degree of worth, and essential characteristic of something, etc." Pirsig knows that, obviously. He is really asking, "How do we know all that?"

In his career as a teacher of rhetoric, before the question drove him mad, his former personna, whom he calls "Phaedrus" found he could get interesting and useful results in his classes using the indefinability of "quality" because he could get his students to think outside the box, as it were. However, he ran into some serious challenges with the faculty, who laid a rhetorical trap for him by asking whether quality was objective or subjective. If it was objective, then why could it not be detected by any scientific method? If it was subjective, then it was just, "what you like" (and therefore without value.)

Phaedrus siezed on that last, realizing that was itself a quality judgement and not based on logic or evidence. He declared that quality was senior to the objective/subjective split, and these were, in fact, artificial demarcations.

Now we get to motorbikes.

This artificial split shows up everywhere. The engineers design a functional machine, and the stylists wrap it in a superficial "style."

Pirsig thinks that we can have utilitarian objects that are very beautiful, and beautiful objects that are very utilitarian. To me, this shows the appeal of bobbers, café racers, and street fighters. It's a machine aesthetic. It can be done when individuals decide to enhance quality for themselves. I sure have seen some gorgeous work here!

Pirsig suggests that this requires a certain state of mind, this is, one supposes, the "Zen" part of the book. When achieved, it leads to greatness.

It took him more than half the book to finally lay out his thesis. He then follows this with a series of anecdotes about "gumption": the attitude you need to be an effectice mechanic, and the various ways you can lose your gumption in the day to day little defeats machines can throw at us.

Finally, Pirsig tells the story of how his former personna went crazy, and he offers the most effective refutation of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle I have yet read. He shows that it was then that there was the rational/aesthetic split, and he disagrees with these philosophers attitude towards those whom they labled "sophists."

In the end, Phaedrus reasserts himself, and Pirsig's son, Chris, who had been being a brat, calms down. He has his real father back.

It was a touching ending.

So there. That's my lightning summary of the book and it's relevance to motorbicyling.
 
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I have the book and I really like the book. I have read it a few times.
Fiddling around with mechanical and electrical things has always been a great form of relaxation for me which was the reason the book was given to me by a very observant friend.
 
I have read the book several times and I really do appreciate his fix it yourself attitude and patience. I have seen motorcyclists who can't fix the simplest little things and miss much riding time because " the bike's in the shop". Sad, and maybe a little stupid.

I once read a long article in a magazine about an Artic expedition with an Inuit snowcat guide/driver. The snowcat threw a rod and the expedition members figured they were going to die, lost in the frozen Northern wastes and panicked, cried, despared, and wailed. The guide, on the other hand, built them all a survival camp, hunted game for food, tore down the snowcat engine, and found a broken rod that could not be repaired. He managed to kill a walrus and patiently carved a new rod from the walrus tusk and gerryrig-repaired the engine. Driving very slowly and gently, so as not to break his fragile ivory connecting rod, he delivered them safely to the nearest town where they could phone loved ones that they were safe, catch a flight with a bush pilot, and he could order the correct parts to permanently repair the snowcat. That is zen at it's finest.
 
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Fiddling around with mechanical and electrical things has always been a great form of relaxation for me which was the reason the book was given to me by a very observant friend.

It's the same with me. I used to get so exasperated with machines. Now I get a natural buzz messing around with 'em. ZAAMM was a rare book. It really helped me cultivate the right attitude.

I have read the book several times and I really do appreciate his fix it yourself attitude and patience. I have seen motorcyclists who can't fix the simplest little things and miss much riding time because " the bike's in the shop". Sad, and maybe a little stupid.

Totally. And the thing is, there are a LOT of totally dishonest, incompetent mechanics, so depending on them is bad policy. That story about the snowmobile adventure was as good as it gets. That guide sure had the right stuff!

:geek:, Thanks for sharing, I bought I honda last month, good for enheice my know of maintenance!

Hi! Welcome to the forum, and you are welcome. I'm pretty new myself, but I hear the thing to do is introduce oneself in the introductions forum.

Cheers,
Rick
 
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