Happy birthday this week to Robert M. Pirsig (1928-2017), author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a novel of ideas which became an unlikely publishing phenomenon in the 1970s and a counter-cultural touchstone for many, including me. A New York Times remembrance on the occasion of his passing is here.
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“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, then work outward from there.”
“The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth.’ So, it goes away. Puzzling.”
“It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top…. The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.”
The scene from the book I remember most vividly is the one where his bike breaks down on the road in Montana. After hitch-hiking to some small town nearby, he happens upon a mechanic with stained coveralls and callused hands and grimy fingernails. Although the mechanic doesn’t have the needed part in stock, he machines it from scratch, then charges next to nothing, just happy to see it work – because he cares so deeply about his craft. That’s the spiritual kernel at the core of this novel. It’s Zen and the art of whatever you care about most deeply. The motorcycle maintenance part? That’s merely incidental. Well, unless you happen to be a mechanic in rural Montana – or a broken-down traveler on the road. Then, of course, it’s absolutely everything.
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Well, to be honest, the other scene I remember from the novel is the one near the beginning where he’s sitting at an oak conference table in a philosophy seminar at the University of Chicago discussing Plato and Aristotle. He gets so fed up with pointlessness of it all, he ends up taking off, heads west, and never returns. But in my own case, that’s another story for another day.