During the course of reading and considering Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue, I had occasion to reflect that the act of sitting under a shady tree, both literally and metaphorically, is a fundamental human experience that very nearly every human being has access to. This notion seems to offer an interesting place to explore what exactly all of that means. It seems like intriguing new Zensylvania territory. So here we have an exploration of the meanings and benefits of shadetrees.
For convenience, let’s start this examination with the Phaedrus dialogue. The dialogue begins with the characters Phaedrus and Socrates heading out of the city for a conversation. Eventually they take up a place to sit by a river under a shady tree. In their case, it was a plane (or sycamore) tree. On face value, this is an interesting and relatively benign detail. Plato presents a couple of intellectuals heading off to a pleasant spot to chat.
I’ve already suggested that sitting und a shady tree is a fundamental human experience and this could be enough. The dialogue is merely showing what any two friends have had opportunity to do throughout human existence: take shelter together and commune. I wouldn’t want to suggest that this simplicity should be mistaken for banality. Instead, and even before any other considerations, I want to suggest that the simplicity is relatively profound. Taking shelter in the natural world to commune and learn from one another is perhaps one of the most fundamental indicators of productive civilization that we have. What could have been more essential to human progress, at any time, than taking a bit of time to figure a few things out together?
Sycamore
For Socrates and Phaedrus, the tree was a platanus orientalis. That is the scientific term. As most of us are aware, standardized scientific terminology (in our contemporary western culture) is most often rendered-in or derived from Latin, Greek and, to a certain extent, Arabic (see my Incomplete Exploration of Fuzzy Logic). The vocabulary preferences displayed in scientific jargon are an interesting tangent which still managers to be firmly connected to this exploration. The reasons that scientists continue to use these languages for their jargon are dominated by the Academy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Sure, there are many other variables and events involved, but western academia (and therefore, science) is rooted with those influential individuals.
So let’s get back to the platanus orientalis. Those two words mean Eastern Plane tree. Orientalis indicates eastern. There is also a platanus occidentalis, or Western Plane tree species as well. Occidentalis indicates western. The eastern variety may also be referred to as the Old World Sycamore while the western variety may be called the American Sycamore. Here again, there is an interesting tangent. In writing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig was clearly interested in the synthesis of many different ideas, not least being the values of Eastern and Western culture. This was an underlying attitude that he held in his approach to the University of Chicago which is detailed in the book.
Pirsig’s interest in these issues are displayed via a number of events of his life and perhaps not insignificantly influenced by a book he referenced reading after having been exposed to Eastern cultures during a period of military service. In ZAMM, Pirsig references having read The Meeting of East and West by F.S.C. Northop. That book was published shortly after the second world war and was deeply concerned with a need to reconcile eastern and western cultures . Northrop recognized that human civilization had entered a period of global interactions which made communication among differing cultures and values existentially necessary.
So the fact of a platanus orientalis and a platanus occidentalis – an eastern and a western shade tree – is not entirely banal.
The plane tree is closely connected with the Athenian Academy which had a grove of trees where the peripatetic (walking) scholars interacted with their students. There was also the Tree of Hippocrates, which was a plane tree. All of this is to say that academics and learning has, for at least 2500 years, been closely associated with the fundamental experience of taking shelter under a shady tree t commune.
Siddhartha or Gautama Buddha sits under the bodhi tree
Fig Trees
Well…let’s continue to play with words a bit and take note that the plan tree is also known by the name ‘sycamore’. Sycamore (sicamour) is a word derived from the root words of sykos (fig) and moron (mulberry). So a sycamore is a fig-mulberry. The sycamore leaf resembles the mulberry leaf while the fruit resembles the fig. Indeed, sycamore is a Biblical word used for a wide-spreading shady tree with fig-like fruit; it should be no surprise that fig-trees are often cited in the Abrahamic religions. Those trees were a valued presence for their fruit and shade – in essence for their community-nurturing properties.
In Buddhism, Guatama Buddha is described as sitting under a ‘Bodhi tree‘ when enlightenment was attained. Bodhi tree means tree of awakening. One of the archetypal images of Buddhism is a person seated in a lotus-position under the canopy of a tree. This is the tree of awakening. The original bodhi tree was a fig tree with the latin name Ficus Religiosa. It seems entirely likely that the fig tree was a central figure of the Buddha story/myth for the same reasons that it appear in the Abahamic stories/myths: community-nurturing properties.
Buddhist literature formally recognizes twenty-nine individuals as having achieved the status of enlightenment or wisdom – thereby attaining the term ‘Buddha’ and each one has a particular species of tree associated with the achievement. Clearly, there is something that is both fundamental and universal in sitting under a shade tree that seemed worth documenting within that tradition.
The image of a single person meditating under a shady tree is not precisely the same as that of two (or more) folks gathered under a tree in community. But it isn’t terribly far from it. In fact, the image of a person meditating under a tree feels far more like an invitation to community than (for example) the image of a hermit in a cave, a sage at the top of a mountain or a variety of other archetypal depictions that one cares to call to mind.
In the final chapter of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there is an extended revelatory scene where Chris, the narrator’s son, is finally freed-up from his sheltered and limiting position behind his father on the back of the motorcycle. At that moment, Chris is finally able to see the trees and the road itself: “The road continues to twist and wind through the trees..some of these branches over the road are hanging so low they’re going to konk him on the head if he’s not careful….the sunlight makes strange and beautiful designs through the tree branches on the road.”
This is the culmination and enlightenment moment for the motorcycle-ride-as-meditation. Pirsig names the tress along this ride on the California coast as being coastal manzanita. The scene clearly sets this species as a kind of Bodhi tree for Chris and/or the narrator.
There had been may scenes in the book prior to this offering trees as vital elements of Pirsig’s intellectual, spiritual and philosophical journey, but let’s focus on the manzanita. Manzanita is derived from the Spanish word for apple, manzana. Manzanita means little apple. It can hardly be a coincidence that the apple is, like the fruit tree, a tree commonly associated with its fruit. And that the apple fruit is frequently referenced as the specific fruit depicted in the Abrahamic (Biblical) story of the Tree of Knowledge which Adam and Eve consumed.
A very early scene in ZAMM has the narrator consuming big Washington apples after his discharge from the military. At the time, he seems to have been reading F.S.C. Northrop’s book about Eastern and Western cultures. In North America, there is a phrase, “American as apple pie” which attempts to establish a thing as genuinely connected to American values. So, Pirsig eating Washington apples while reading and learning is a thorough-going metaphor and the use of the manzanita trees at the close of the book is a particular contemporary (relatively speaking) American version of a temple or shrine tree in the tradition of the figs and sycamores.
Ash and Elm
In 2020, Neil Price published a book titled Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings; it’s an interesting book for anyone who may be interested to learn what contemporary historians have to say about Viking culture. Clearly, my purpose in mentioning the book is that tree-based title.
In Norse mythology, an immense Ash tree is the primordial element of existence. It is Yggdrasil, the tree of life. It is interesting to consider the ordering of those words and recall that old Germanic languages were not all that fussy about word order in their sentences. At least, not as fussy a modern English is. It may well be just as accurate and correct to say instead ‘life which is a tree’. And that offers some different connotations to the mythology.
This notion of Yggdrasil, the tree of life is common enough in our culture that most people are probably familiar with it. But fewer, I expect, consider the specific species of tree that the Viking mind envisioned when invoking this element of the culture. Clearly, the mythology of these northern people pointed to the ash.
These cultures also involved the concept of a warden tree (a kind of protecting spirit) and these trees were commonly ash, elm and linden species. Interestingly, the word “warden” is cognate with vordr..a kind of wraith or spirit.
Yggdrasil: The Tree of Life
I can’t help but observe that Robert Pirsig was of Swedish and German descent and would certainly have been familiar with Norse mythology. Certainly an early passage in ZAMM has the narrator recite a short passage from a poem by Wolfgang von Goethe – the Erlkonig. I take this to be a link to Pirsig’s observation that the book is a link to his personal and cultural mythologies.
The species of trees which serve as the focal-point are clearly not the fig trees observed in the more southern cultural seats of the other cultures considered. That seems reasonable and perhaps an indication of a clearly different relationship to trees and forests. One might consider that the northern people considered themselves, as the title of Price’s book indicates, to be children of the forest, a sylvan culture.
Ash, elm and linden trees are certainly in keeping with shade trees and further demonstrates the fundamental connection humanity has with tree and with the act of taking shelter and community in their shade.
Regardless of the many other culture that may be similarly – and the perhaps diminishing probability that I would be able to weave some connection to the established themes of Zensylvania – the underlying point here is that the relationship between us as individual and collective folk and the act of being among trees is fundamental. It is older than history.
The fact that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people live in vast municipal infrastructures where the ability to connect with that relationship is a rare, limited or non-existent situation is a travesty. Certainly there are other pressing travesties. But this one seems to be uniquely indicative of the crisis humanity is experiencing. The simple and profound act of being under and among the trees is vanished for vast portions of the human population. It is a sobering and saddening thought.
At my present home, the front porch of the house sits under the canopy of what is most likely a thirty- to fifty-year-old Crimson King Norway Maple tree (Acer Platanoides). The tree is presently taller than our 2.5-story, century-old home. It is one of the most comfortable and relaxing places of our home to be. And indeed, the tree lends a welcoming coziness to the entire block that we live on. People want to park their cars under our tree, whether they are neighbours or visitors to the area.
Our home is not significantly different than the ones that line the several blocks of our street. They’re all, more or less, the same kind of thing. But the tree establishes a particular community welcome that simply isn’t present elsewhere on the block or street. While we didn’t plant the tree (it may well be as old as I am) – but its presence certainly played a role in the affection we had for the property when moving to the community.
Being Canadian, I can’t help but observe that maple trees have been a symbol of shared community throughout our history. There are ten varieties of maple native to Canada and six of those are native to Ontario: Moosewood Maple, Red Maple, Silver Maple, Freeman Maple, the Sugar Maple and the Manitoba Maple. Maple leaves have appeared on Canadian flags dating to the Red Ensign naval flag of the 1890s. The current flag with two vivid red stripes and a matching maple leaf was designed in the 1960s. Ontario’s flag has borne maple leaves since that same period when many people in Ontario wished to retain some reminiscence of the Red Ensign.
Most, if not all, of the homes I can recall living in had a maple tree somewhere on the property. They have always been a part of the community.
The Shade Tree Mechanic
Shadetree mechanic is a term used to describe a particular kind of person. It’s someone who sits under the shade of a tree to maintain and repair their own equipment. Usually on their own property and at their leisure. It’s a term that an interesting connotative weight of pride, self-reliance, pragmatism and even some sense of mockery or derision.
The shade-tree mechanic is a generalist who overcomes obstacles to the best of their ability and resources. These are virtues.
Some of that is by jerry-rigging the equipment or circumstances they need to accomplish their goals or needs. Consider the archetypal concept/image of an engine being lifted from a car using a chain slung over a tree branch. On the one hand, there is evidence of resource-scarcity, otherwise the expensive specialized equipment and environment would be present. On the other hand, the shade-tree mechanic does not allow this scarcity to be a ‘gumption trap’ that prevents work from being done.
Shadetree mechanics can be hobbyists, as in the hotrod culture where increasing a vehicle’s performance is a matter of entertainment, or it can be a matter of necessity for the person who needs their equipment to be in running order and does not have access to a specialist to do it for them. (we don’t need to exclusively focus on vehicles, despite Zensylvania drawing on automobiles as a primary reference point). Anybody who maintains and repairs their own equipment and technology is a shadetree mechanic.
They are a person who keeps the infrastructure of their own lives operating not (necessarily) as a profession, but as a matter of principle, need or preference.
The fact that a shady tree is a involved also makes this situation a matter that is related to other community-building and self-shaping matters examined in this essay. The shade-tree mechanic is often accompanied by friends, family and neighbours. Peers. Folk. Kin.
It is a time and place where practical wisdom and social connection may be shared. Where values may be exchanged.
And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good – Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
The Phaedrus dialogue doesn’t seem to be one of Plato’s most popular nor one of his most-frequently examined dialogues. Those who study Plato seem to focus far more attention on The Republic, Phaedo, Crito and The Apology of Socrates (which I have also written about and provided a reading-of via the Zensylvania Podcast). Phaedrus just isn’t one of the dialogue’s that is identified as required reading in mainstream academic or recreational philosophy.
But for those of us who may be interested to expand our appreciation of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an examination of Phaedrus is not only useful – it is probably requisite. I make that comment with a certain degree of self-consciousness as I’ve not found very much scrutiny of Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue in the popular commentary on Pirsig that I’ve reviewed since taking the book seriously in 2014. While drafting this essay, I couldn’t recall whether significant attention had been given to Phaedrus in Di Santo & Steele’s Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, so I pulled my copy off the shelf to remind myself. The guidebook is a wonderful companion to ZAMM but I don’t find a significant comparative or analytical study of the two works. Frankly, that rather surprises me.
At this time, my assumption is that mainstream western philosophy hasn’t been interested in re-opening many of the matters that overlap between Phaedrus and ZAMM. Most particularly, matters of rhetoric and its place in academia seem to be something western academic philosophy studiously avoided throughout the twentieth and these early decades of the twenty-first century that we’ve experienced so far. So that’s what we’re going to do here – examine Phaedrus as a channel-deepener to Pirsig’s books and also for possible insights into living the kind of life we want to live.
A Reading of Phaedrus
As the August 2022 Episode of the Zensylvania Podcast (S02, E17), I published a reading of the Phaedrus dialogue. You can think of that reading as a companion to this essay (or vice versa). I hope the reading is useful to those who may be dis-inclined to read the Phaedrus for themselves. Perhaps you have time constraints such that it isn’t convenient to sit down with a printed or digital copy. Maybe you just prefer to consume information in audio format. Or maybe you’re already read the Phaedrus and are interested in an audio version to augment your understanding or appreciation of it. Whatever the reason you have for listening to the Phaedrus, I hope my version is of value.
For my own engagement of the text, recording and editing an audio version of the Phaedrus was an interesting process. If you haven’t taken the opportunity to read a text aloud for some time, it is an exercise that I recommend. What I have found is that reading a text aloud results in a better understanding of the words on the page compared to simply reading it silently. The rhythm of my reading adapts to the sentence structure and to the pace of actually saying things rather than merely taking them in through my eyes. Quite literally, by reading aloud, more of my brain is occupied in the process of engaging the text. I sometimes find words and/or word combinations which challenge me when reading aloud that I simply zip by when reading. How the name “Alcibiades” sounds simply doesn’t matter in a silent reading….the collected letters of the name are enough to consistently signify a person or character named Alcibiades. I also find that reading aloud forces me to engage all of the words of the text; I can’t ignore or skip them, whether by distraction or impatience, as I might when reading silently. In short, reading aloud forces me to establish an expanded and more thorough relationship to the text and, to a limited extent, to re-organize my insights into related texts, such as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Not at all coincidentally, a significant underlying theme of Plato’s Phaedrus is a contrasting of Socrates’ preferred dynamic, conversational style of philosophy and teaching called dialectic with a more static, written method which we can think of as rhetoric. Spoken words versus written text. With the Zensylvania podcast we have the advantage of being able to present both systems at once. In a sense, we’re able to do something that Socrates…or for that matter, 1970s era Robert Pirsig really couldn’t do…provide you with a written essay simultaneously to my recorded human voice. I suppose the only thing we’re missing so far is the live back-and-forth of a conversation. Well maybe you can help out. I’m happy to record a conversation or dialectic exploration of the ideas in Plato’s Phaedrus contrasted with the motorcycle zen themes. And add it to the episode.
Here in the twenty-first century, we shouldn’t be looking at this matter of the contrast between dialectic and rhetoric as solely a consideration of competition among ancient Greek philosophers for students – as we will see that it is. Nor should we consider it quaint pre-occupation of a twentieth century American neo-pragmatist with a moderate pre-occupation with motorcycles. Because indeed, when we look around us, the distinct offerings of a primarily verbal and interactive modality with a primarily literate and non-interactive model is critical to every part of our modern culture. From pre-school to adult learning, as individuals and as a species, we face a critical problem of how best to communicate. To share information. The matter of rhetoric versus dialectic is, indeed a deeply significant cultural matter. And perhaps that is one justification for Robert Pirsig to have considered his book a culture-bearing book. Well, hopefully the exploration that follows will reveal some insights for us.
Who is Phaedrus?
Beginning with the Plato, Phaedrus is presented as a young friend and disciple to Socrates. Phaedrus escorts Socrates on a walk outside of the city gates to read an essay and engage Socrates in a dialectic exchange. The essay which Phaedrus reads to Socrates (and which is the anchor of the dialogue that Socrates and Phaedrus will have) was obtained from Lysias, a friend of Phaedrus, and a contemporaneously famous rhetorician.
A note about pronunciation. I proceed on the understanding that the appropriate pronunciation of Phaedrus is….Fay-druss. That is the way I pronounce the name in the my reading of the dialogue and how I have always felt the name ought to be pronounced. When I decided to read the dialogue for the podcast, I pondered using alternative pronunciations such as “Fay-uh-druss”, “Fie-druss” and “Fee-druss”. I admit that I was rather less interested in choosing a pronunciation that classics scholars might approve than with choosing a version that fits my appreciation of both the ideas in the books and, perhaps strangely, North American automotive culture. This latter consideration tempted me to go with “Fay-uh-druss”.
1930 Cord L-29 Phaeton
I was motivated by the word “Phaeton”. This term was borrowed from horse-and-buggy carriage-making of the 1800s into early automotive coach building. Many of the earliest automobiles were situations where the motor, transmission and chassis (frame) were built by one company and a coach-builder would create and attach the body and all of the rest of the vehicle by custom order. A phaeton was a sporty, open car with no permanently installed roof. When I think of the phaeton as an automobiles, what comes to mind are big old classics from the 1920s through to the early 1940s. Cords, Duesenbergs, Packards. Big old cars with hand-made coaches that still drew their design inspiration from elegant horse-drawn carriages. A phaeton carries the slightest reminiscence of a chariot. The kind of thing you’d expect Gatsby to drive.
Via carriage-making in the 1800s, the term phaeton ultimately derives from, appropriately enough, Greek mythology. Phaethon was a son of Helios – the god and personification of the sun. Phaethon’s story is that he travelled to the sun-god’s palace in the east to find and connect with his father. Eventually, the two meet and Phaethon asks to drive Helios’ chariot for a single day. Helios’ declines Phaethon’s request, describing the various dangers Phaethon would encounter if he tried to drive the celestial chariot. Helios advises Phaethon that only he, Helios, is able to control the horses. Still, Phaethon persists in his pleas and eventually Helios relents, allowing Phaethon to drive the chariot. Inevitably, the ride is a disaster. Phaethon cannot keep the wild, powerful horses under control. The chariot careens wildly, first coming to close to the earth, scorching it then soaring too far away and leaving the earth frozen. Eventually, Zeus steps in and strikes Phaethon with a lighting bolt to bring the wild careening ride to an end. Phaethon dies and his body falls into the river Eridanus.
Helios, the Sun God, on his Chariot
It is a remarkable story for a number of reasons. Most prominently, of course, we have that name Phaethon to connect to Plato’s (and Pirsig’s) Phaedrus. The word ‘phaos’ is the ancient Greek root-word for light (think photon) and we can clearly see how both names, Phaedrus or Phaethon, link to light and brightness. Just as clearly, we have this wild and tragic story of a son fatally failing to drive his father’s chariot – a vehicle far outside of the son’s abilities. It’s a cautionary tale archetype for anyone handing the keys to a powerful vehicle to a younger generation. This comment and observation of handing the keys to a powerful vehicle to a younger generation should be viewed as a meaningful and important metaphor. And it couldn’t have been more perfect for Pirsig to reference in the naming of the primary character in a father-son motorcycle journey. While the relationships between Pirsig, Phaedrus and Chris in ZAMM are not as transparent as the Helios-Phaethon relationship, the connotations are there.
As a metaphor, this handing over the reins of power should be considered and understood beyond merely joy-rides. In fact, this is a central issue. In handing the reigns of his chariot to his son, Helios was not merely dealing with a couple of horses and some wheels…he was handing over control of a fundamental and essential component in the operation of the cosmos. And when things went wrong for the young and incompetent Phaethon, it was Phaethon that crashed and burned, not Helios.
This is a critical matter. For Socrates in addressing his Phaedrus, his concern is to steward his relationship to a protege to guide him away from a Phaethon-like destruction. Similarly Pirsig wishes to guide his son, Chris, away from mental-health disasters that an earlier version of himself (his very own Phaedrus) experienced. And we today have our relationships to our following generations and the matter of finding the best way to guide them away from a ride that they may not be competent for and which could very well end in oblivion. It is an ultimate existential matter, isn’t it?
Which brings up the matter of Zeus’ lightning bolt. In the Greek myth, the lightning bolt destroys Phaethon. In ZAMM, the lightning bolt which liquidated a personality (destroying Phaedrus) took the form of electro convulsive shock therapy which Pirsig underwent. The synchronicity is almost too terrible and chilling to consider.
When I was first drafting this essay, an image search using the terms “motorcycle” and “chariot” revealed a variety of images that seem to be simultaneously inevitable and bizarrely improbable. Particularly old black and white photos which depict an insane Mad Max version of the chariot race scenes in Ben-Hur. If the spirit of Pirsig’s Phaedrus can be depicted in an image, I propose this one which I’m going to call Thus Spake Phaedrus.
Thus Spake Phaedrus (Cue the Strauss)
Exploration of the Phaethon myth brings new insights into the characters and events of both Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It addresses how things work in our world and who bears responsibility for ensuring that they are maintained and enabled to work to our benefit. It also addresses what happens when power and responsibility is handed to people who aren’t competent to handle it. For Phaethon, he was destroyed. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an incompetent and under-prepared Robert Pirsig eventually undergoes shock therapy. There is also an encapsulated version of the myth in the anecdote when Phaedrus/Pirsig took his Honda to a repair shop where some incompetent mechanics bashed around and damaged the bike. In that setting, Pirsig himself was Helios who ended up taking his chariot home with the decision that it was his responsibility to address.
In Plato’s story, Phaedrus is clearly the bright youth or student. The relationship depicted between Phaedrus and Socrates does not seem to be presented as a father-son relationship. It does seem to be a relationship of an older male teacher or mentor to a younger male student or prodigy. I’m not certain of the parameters of relations of those kinds in ancient Greece and will defer further observation of that to some other time. This mentor relationship is fundamental to the Phaethon myth as well. Appropriate mentorship of a younger generation is one of the greatest of responsibilities of an older generation. This is a feature of ZAMM and something we’ll come back to later in this examination.
In the Phaedrus dialogue, Socrates spends considerable time using a chariot and horses metaphor to explore the themes of love and the human “soul”. So linking exploration of the metaphysics of humanity to the technologies of transportation is at least as old as Greek mythology. Pirsig’s use of the metaphor is again established as entirely consistent and justifiable in context of the mythology and the reference material of the Phaedrus dialogue as sources.
In ZAMM, Phaedrus is the name that Pirsig gives to an earlier version of himself – a younger, brighter and more endangered version of himself. Arguably a version of himself that was not adequately mentored – at least not as presented in ZAMM. A version that was perhaps more in keeping with the mythological Phaethon than the Phaedrus of Plato’s work. In consideration of this, it seems to me that the Phaedrus persona most closely aligns to Pirsig as a student up to a time before he attended the University of Chicago (while teaching at the University of Illinois’ Navy Pier campus).
At around that time (and still before the lightning of shock therapy struck), the persona of the character shifted to be more aligned with Lysias (who does not personally appear in the dialogue – we understand him only through the text that Phaedrus reads – which is a significant and appropriate thing when considering the dialogue). Indeed, as Pirsig was both a student and a teacher at that time, it may be most accurate and appropriate to think of the character at that time as being an incomplete transition from a Phaedrus-state and to a Lysias-state.
And so who is Phaedrus? Simply put, Phaedrus is that younger version of ourselves who we can remember as still bright and full of potential. Phaedrus is also our next generation for whom we have tremendous responsibility and concern. Phaedrus is our protege and the young person who is no longer a child but not quite an adult and a peer. Phaedrus is our ambition, our hope and our light.
Who is/was Lysias
Pirsig has explained that he was confused when choosing the name Phaedrus and perhaps ought to have chosen the name Lysias. Whether that is factually correct or not, Pirsig preferred that we proceed as though it were true. I am disinclined to go with Pirsig’s preference on this.
In Phaedrus, Lysias is a rhetorician and seems also to be a suitor for the affections and tutelage of Phaedrus (at least, a reading of the essay seems to suggest this). Socrates disapproves of Lysias in nearly all ways. He doesn’t like his rhetoric and he doesn’t want to lose his disciple to Lysias.
Lysias
I am not convinced by Pirsig’s claim that his own errors in judgement led him to choose the name Phaedrus instead of Lysias. The Phaethon myth is too well aligned to ZAMM to be a complete coincidence. Had Pirsig used the name Lysias, this connection would be largely out-of-reach. Also, it seems correct that a mid-forties aged Pirsig might perceive his younger self as a bit of a golden-child.
However, a not-quite-young-anymore Robert Pirsig, with a family and no longer able to be a rising intellectual star, that person is certainly able to be named Lysias. In ZAMM, Pirsig describes taking-up the cause of rhetoric and the Sophists. He rebels against Plato, Socrates and academia itself. He wolfishly describes going to Chicago as if he were an intellectual hit man.
“Great Universities proceeded in a Hegelian fashion and any school which could not accept a thesis contradicting its fundamental tenets was in a rut. This Phaedrus claimed, was the thesis the University of Chicago was waiting for…..if someone else were to produce a thesis which purported to be a major breakthrough between Eastern and Western philosophy, between religious mysticism and scientific positivism, he would think it of major historic importance, a thesis which would place the University miles ahead. In any event, he said, no one was really accept in Chicago until he’d rubbed someone out. It was time Aristotle go his.” (Chapter 28)
The passage refers to Phaedrus’ attitude when he received some resistance or rejection to an attempt to enroll in the University of Chicago’s Interdisciplinary Program in “Analysis of Ideas and Study of Methods” which included oversight from the University’s philosophy, English, Chinese and Classics professors. When asked what his substantive field was, Phaedrus explained that it was English composition. The committee chairman rejected the field (which one may simply re-term rhetoric for this essay) as methodological rather than substantive. And it is a root consideration..is composition substance or only method. Consideration of this question is what made Phaedrus feel so wolfishly akin to Lysias.
Historically, Lysias was a rhetorician at the time that Socrates, Plato (and a bit later Aristotle) were dominant intellectuals and scholars of their day. Lysias was a speech-writer and clearly was not a political nor intellectual friend of those proto-academics. When I read Plato, I am frequently concerned by his contemporaneous political intentions. I don’t quite trust that Plato was a fully objective and unbiased source of information. When I approach Plato, I can’t help but think of contemporary partisan politics to wonder how much of what Plato put to paper was a kind of thumb-on-the-scale rhetoric and how much was an earnest and faithful representation of either Socrates’ ideas or Plato’s own.
So here’s an irony about reading Plato in general and the Phaedrus in particular. Despite the fact that Plato advocates for a dialectic method of learning and mentorship via the character called Socrates – he clearly employed rhetoric and writing as vehicles for his philosophy. This is unlike the actual Socrates, from whom no written material is available. So Plato used rhetoric in attempts to intellectually undermine and devalue rhetoricians.
A note about pronunciation. I went with “Liss-ee-us” in my reading but was tempted to go with “Lie-see-us”. The latter version seems to evoke the relationship of the name to it’s root-word origin meaning wolf…as in lycanthrope.
In ZAMM, the scenes wherein Phaedrus is in a kind of conflict with his instructors at the University of Chicago and presents himself as a “wolf” or lone wolf…and this is Pirsig’s confusion between wanting to portray himself as an intellectual wolf among the sheep on the one hand but a kind of radiant golden-child on the other.
Clearly there is room for both personas. Our personalities are mutable over time. Different versions of ourselves are continuously emerging -perhaps now we are a gold-child version of ourselves with hope of rising to glory and power and then again, what seems to be mere moments later, we are a Phaedrus – wolfishly hunting things down…and again at some other time, perhaps we are Helios or Zeus.
This mutability over time is no small consideration, either for ZAMM or for our own lives. I certainly recall times when the golden-child version of myself was most dominant. At times, I can bring that feeling to mind again – either by reliving those times in my memory or approaching some endeavor in a similar manner. However, as I am undoubtedly in the second half of the life, it would be somewhat disappointing if I still viewed myself as that rising golden-child. For me, however, there isn’t any confusion between a Phaedrus version of myself and a Lysias version of myself. While I remember golden-child days and can revive golden-child spirit, it is clear that I am not fundamentally that earlier version of myself. In a sense, I am expressing a significant disagreement with “inner child” notions that suggest adult persons are the living and current embodiment of their childhood – that there’s a child within us currently and always. This seems to me to be a diminishing and confusing perspective – as with Pirsig’s uncertainty whether to name a character with one name or another.
So again, returning to an earlier question…who is Lysias. Well Lysias was an established and respected rhetorician. He was a nemesis to Socrates, Plato – a threat to the foundation of all that was and is academia. Lysias and rhetoric was the alternative mentor for Phaedrus…and for all of western Philosophy. As a speech-writer, Lysias is a political reality outside of the ivory towers. For Plato – Lysias is the anti-academic. But Lysias is also the advocate of literacy and technology. Composition is his field. And here we must confront the question whether that is a methodological or a substantive area. Lysias is the wolf in the garden of academia.
Outside the City Gates
At the beginning of Phaedrus, Socrates explains that he takes his learning from engaging with people within the city. It is his environment. The setting for Socrates requires interaction with others. Dialectic is dependent upon what we may refer to as urban settings.
In the Phaedrus dialogue, however, Socrates and Phaedrus leave the city sit by a river under a plane tree, They have brought the ideas of people with them in the form of a written essay. These facts will become interesting to consider later in this essay where we have a reminiscence of dialectic exchange between Thoth and Thamus. The written essay is what allows Phaedru and Socrates to leave the city – the dynamic source of the themes.
ZAMM also begins with an explanation of getting out of the city. The narrator undertakes his Chautauquas with the reader in the role of listener. If we accept the Phaedrus as a kind of template…Pirsig (the author) is our Plato; the narrator is our Socrates as well as our Lysias and our Phaedrus.
Rhetoric
Within the Phaedrus dialogue, Socrates presents a story of two Egyptian gods, Thoth and Thamus, at the invention of the technology of writing. Thamus argued that writing would be a benefit to humanity by expanding human memory. Thoth argued that writing would actually erode human capacity for memory and general/practical living and knowing. Thoth argued that reliance on writing would mean humans would not use their memories but would instead use writing to remember. These arguments relate directly to Pirsig’s ideas of static and dynamic quality – where static quality is in the writing while dyanmic quality is in the active memory of the human.
A significant theme of ZAMM is a struggle with technology and our capacity to live satisfying lives. We may no longer think of writing as a technology – which shows just how ancient it is and the extent to which Thoth’s argument is correct. Cell phones and all things internet are contemporary exhibitions of the theme. Pirsig saw technology as a threat to humanity’s ability to live in the cutting edge of reality; Thoth also saw this threat. Today, we can go to a park with wonderful natural scenery and observe people staring down at a hand-held screen. Or we can casually pose a thought in conversation and have an individual quickly relay a relevant piece of information gleaned from a vast trove of digital information. And just as quickly forgotten.
Via the parable of Thoth and Thamus, Socrates laments a situation where written documents leads to people generally knowing less…as they rely on the documents to provide knowledge. This is the ivory tower of academia versus the workshops of trade schools; book learning versus lived experience; theory versus practice. Professional specialization versus generalization.
Despite Socrates (and therefore Plato’s) apparent preference for a dynamic quality experience of learning via dialectic, academia has evolved into a rhetorical form. When academia was significantly more restricted in size, this situation was perhaps less prominent than it is today. I might suggest that the more dominated by rhetorical forms, methods and patterns that academia undergoes, the more it will be prone to the faults of rhetoric that Plato observed.
Pirsig seems to agree with Plato that dynamic approaches that result in greater general knowledge and ability of students is preferable.
Rhetoric is not just writing, it is arguing for a particular end. Today, we see rhetoric as primarily presenting of arguments to achieve a case or policy. When education is designed around achieving a rhetorically-designed end, anything outside of serving that end is disregarded or held as problematic. Unfortunately for the students, that also means that their training is also held to the specialization of the rhetorically-designed end.
Through Socrates, Plato advocates for Dialectic – the exploration of information, ideas and truth through dialogue and he saw rhetoric/writing as being in conflict with this. As reminiscence rather than memory. Not cutting edge of reality.
Conversation rather than essay…exchange that is in the moment, dyanmic.
Rhetoric is consistent with Pirsig’s static quality
Dialectic is consistent with Pirsig’s dyanmic quality
Rhetoric is the production of artifacts; dialectic is the lived experience.
Plane tree or sycamore…
Sitting Under the Plane Tree
In Phaedrus, Socrates and Phaedrus choose to take up a place under a plane tree (platanus) to have their discussion. The plane tree is closely associated with the Academy of Plato and Aristotle.
This act of sitting under a tree is a critical metaphor and symbol and deserves some consideration in reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or more broadly in life.
Trees occupy a significant presence in ZAMM; trees are frequently mentioned to help establish the setting and the situation. They are a landmark and a reference. Most frequently, and memorably, referenced in ZAMM are pines. Pines seem to hold a special, almost primordial position in Pirsig’s aesthetic environment. Pines are present in the anecdote when Pirsig and his son Chris foreshortened a trip in a rain-storm “But there weren’t any mechanics. Just cutover pine trees and brush and rain.” Pine trees occur in brief passages of this sort as a kind of continuous, stabilizing presence, but they are not the kinds of trees that one sits under.
In chapter three, the riders must take shelter and John Sutherland has pointed out a convenient spot. The narrator recalls that there is a “better one if you turn right at a row of cottonwoods a few blocks down.” While this surprises the other riders, the cottonwoods act as a memory anchor for the narrator and for us.
In chapter eight, the narrator visit’s Bill’s cycle shop “under some shady trees.”; this scene follows an extensive description of the narrator performing inspection and tuning tasks on the motorcycle due to some concerning performance he’d observed.
In chapter fifteen, while the motorcycle’s chain adjustment link is being serviced at a repair shop, the narrator and his son firs sit on a church’s lawn then “…walk under shady trees on very neat sidewalks past neat houses….he prepared his lectures in the peripatetic manner, using these streets as his academy.”
Chapter seventeen..they are mountain-climbing and Chris “sits under a tree and rests. He doesn’t look at me, and that’s how I know it’s bad….is afraid to face the possibility that his fear creates: that he may not be able to climb the mountain at all…”
In the final chapter of the book, there is an extended revelatory scene where Chris is finally freed-up from his sheltered and limiting position on the back of the motorcyle and is able to see the trees…”The road continues to twist and wind through the trees..some of these branches over the road are hanging so low they’re going to konk him on the head if he’s not careful….the sunlight makes strange and beautiful designs through the tree branches on the road.”
This is a zen moment for the motorcycle-ride-as-meditation. Pirsig names the coastal manzanita and this seems to serve as Pirsig’s bodhi tree.
In Buddhism, the Buddha is described as sitting under a Bodhi tree. One of the archetypal images of Buddhism is a person seated in a lotus-position under the canopy of a tree. This is the tree of awakening. The original bodhi tree is a fig tree with the latin name Ficus religiosa.
Sitting under a tree is a thing that nearly every person is capable of. I mean that in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Sitting in the shade of a tree is a fundamental experience. Indeed, a fundamental pleasure. One that we can do at any age and, in many cases regardless of the surrounding events of our lives if we choose to.
At my present home, the front porch of the house sits under the canopy of what is most likely a thirty- to fifty-year-old Crimson King Norway maple tree. It is one of the most comfortable and relaxing places of our home to be. And indeed, the tree lends a welcoming coziness to the entire block that we live on. People want to park their cars under our tree. Meanwhile the back deck and patio sit under a forty-foot tall Balsam Fir.
Living in a major urban centre without trees is one of the most destructive of conditions that we have allowed in modern society. The environments which we have created that are devoid of trees denies access to a fundamental human experience – just sitting under a tree.
Siddhartha or Gautama Buddha sits under the bodhi tree
In the Phaedrus dialogue three is also a reference to taking learning from an oak or a rock…this idea of taking learning directly from nature rather than from teachers. The grasshoppers are muses….nature and the natural world rather than dogma and prescriptive doctrines. It is a sentiment that sits comfortably with Zen philosophy and with the scenic passages of ZAMM. Most notably, Pirsig takes learning directly from the nature of the landscape and from the atmosphere. Throughout the book, he is observing weather and temperature and geography. But he also seeks to find learning in the real-world of his motorcycle’s behaviour. Here we may take “nature” to refer to anything that exists in the physical (or natural) world compared to what exists only in the mind.
Truth
Throughout western Philosophy and certainly within Plato, there is a common conjoining of “the good” and “truth”.
Socrates disapproves of rhetoric and writing as an inadequate replacement for direct living and interaction. He also disapproves of rhetoric and writing as a form that enables a departure from truth.
in the sections of ZAMM where the narrator recalls teaching experiences in Bozeman, Montana as well as his interactions with the University of Chicago when he reveals his area as “English composition” and is accused of being a methodological field. In essence it is revealing Pirsig’s interest in rhetoric and mainstream American philosophy’s disinterest in the same.
Early in ZAMM, the narrator refers to the truth knocks on the door…go away, I’m looking for the truth. This sentence can refer to his own knocking on the door of the University of Chicago’s philosophy department door. Go away, I’m looking for the truth says Plato and academia to rhetoric. The truth, as far as Pirsig can see is in quality and may well be revealed using composition. Rhetoric.
Pirsig advises a student to start with a single brick and work outwards from there. This is a form of advocating inductive reasoning.
Metaphorical Language
The language of myth and metaphor is used in part because it shows the relationship of the use of language to lived and experienced reality. Socrates compares the grasshoppers and plane trees to mythical creatures, gods and events. What we have is a contrasting of subjective narrative-based reality with objective observable facts and remembered experiences. These, too, are central themes of ZAMM and can provide interesting insight into Pirsig’s metaphysics of quality.
In the Phaedrus dialogue, Socrates laments that documents are read to be believed rather than to be critically engaged. This is not a small theme in our contemporary society when the internet and various forms of mass media provide vast quantities of information. We must ask ourselves…do we read in order to believe or do we read to critically engage? To what extent are we participating in subjective narrative-based realities or objective facts and experiences. Are we competent to reject a forced choice between the two and instead synthesize these into an intelligently and authentically experienced whole?
Isocrates
Isocrates: Freedom. Self-Control and Virtue
At the end of the Phaedrus dialogue, Plato includes what may be either a backhanded compliment or a sarcastic reference to a rhetorician named Isocrates.
Isocrates was a leading rhetorician and competitor of Plato’s academy when it came to drawing in the young golden-child-status students from Athens’ wealthy families. Plato has Socrates say that Isocrates may rise above the limits of rhetoric.
Isocrates’ writing shows a promotion of freedom, self-control (what I may call self-accountability) and virtue. There is a political theory built on this which is called ‘isocracy’ that is distinct from ‘democracy’ which Plato advocated and the political systems of that name which are dominant today. Some view Isocrates to have been an advocate of ‘pragmatic’ principles as well as probability as a tool for navigating life and truth. Isocrates also focussed on ‘arete’, which is a word/concept that Robert Pirsig features in his metaphysics of quality via Lila and ZAMM.
In my own estimation, Isocrates appears worth more time and attention despite Plato’s bit of damning with faint praise.
In a study of ZAMM, this rather passing reference should not be ignored as it opens the door to more consideration…and will form the basis of a future essay/episode in Zensylvania.
Synthesis
In this review of Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue, it seems less important to establish whether Robert Pirsig really did agree with Plato and the academics or whether he preferred Isocrates and the rhetoricians/sophists. It seems to me that preferring the methods and principles of one faction over another is akin to relating to contemporary left-right politics. It gets in the way of one’s ability to draw the best, most correct and most useful elements of all the factions. Rather than trying to justify, reject or overlook an ideology due to its failings and flaws, it seems sensible to figure out in a dynamic way in what ways, under what circumstances and to what extent an ideology may be “true”. See my explorations of fuzzy logic. It seems to me that this is what Pirsig was doing when he tried to synthesize different systems to understand his own life.
Dynamic quality, as the cutting edge of reality, is entirely circumstantial.
To understand and apply these things in our own lives…where does reading and writing fit in our lives. Is the alphabet a kind of descent from memory to reminiscence….from engaging our lives to engaging with abstractions and patterns? Is the internet a continuation and complication of that?
In my podcast, I have focussed on artifacts (essays) and speechifying rather than dialectics…at least so far. They are different.
On the interior panel of the dust jacket cover of On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence, there is a brief proclamation attributed to Robert M. Pirsig that “The ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment.” This was, apparently, Pirsig’s opinion in 1962 – well before either of Pirsig’s more famous books Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Lila, were published. On Quality, has been published posthumously and a few short months ago. For reasons peculiar to my own interests and inquiries, this proclamation strikes me as tremendously important as well as being something that might just take one down a long path of discovery.
This observation that one of Robert Pirsig’s sentences bears the potential for protracted curiosity is fully consistent with my experience of examining Pirsig’s earlier books. There is usually something to explore, contend-with or discover just about anywhere one happens to open the book.
For example, as I’ve not yet run down the relationship between “enlightenment” and “excellence”, I’m not confident that I fully agree that the ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment. Perhaps for Pirsig it seemed to be. Having reflected on that sentence, I would actually prefer if Pirsig had claimed that the “ultimate goal in the pursuit of enlightenment is excellence.” My revision of Pirsig’s circa 1962 sentence seems, at least to me, to be more in keeping with the Metaphysics of Quality philosophy that he later developed. And I do wonder if he might have similarly revised that sentiment if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to that question. But I tend to think that Pirsig may have been the kind of person who updated his opinions when new information was available.
I’m also not certain whether Pirsig’s 1962 conception of “enlightenment” aligns with his perception of “enlightenment” in 1974 or 1990….nor for that matter with my understanding of “enlightenment” here in 2022. The same word may have been used to describe three slightly different things.
One thing that the word “enlightenment” often refers to a process where a person is freed -up from ignorance and misconception. The enlightened individual understands things as they really and truly are. Enlightenment is therefore a process by which one achieves that state of understanding. This version of the word “enlightenment” seems to track well with Pirsig’s 1962 sentence…pursuing excellence might well lead to an enlightened status relative that status one is pursuing excellence within. If motorcycle maintenance happened to be the field, then so be it…an enlightened motorcycle maintainer. Even if by “motorcycle maintenance” we are actually metaphorically saying “self maintenance.”
This initial definition of “enlightenment” may, however, be tracked via (at least) two different major philosophical paths – that being the Enlightenment of Western Philosophy and the enlightenment of Buddhism in Eastern Philosophy.
Baruch Spinoza: There’s no reason not to think of Spinoza when examining Pirsig
In the Western/Euro-American tradition, the Enlightenment is what I will call a humanist intellectual movement that is generally recognized as beginning in the 1600s and, arguably, continues on today. I have no difficulty suggesting that Robert Pirsig’s philosophy sits comfortably on a branch of the major route that is the Enlightenment. The humanist Enlightenment movement synthesizes a worldview that focuses on reason, science and a common humanity with goals of human understanding, freedom, and happiness. Robert Pirsig had certainly been exposed to both Western and Eastern philosophy by 1962 and would have been well aware of the Enlightenment. I doubt that Pirsig was specifically referencing the formally recognized enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th century. But it is not inconceivable that he may have been aligning with the ideals and goals iterated as a part of all that. So the pursuit of excellence could be argued to ideally end in human understanding, freedom and happiness.
Finally, along the Buddhist path, we find that enlightenment refers to a blessed status that is free from desire and suffering. Again, we know that Pirsig had been educated about Eastern concepts and would have been able to contemplate whether the pursuit of excellence had an end goal of being free from desire and suffering. On page 109 of On Quality, Pirsig states that Soto Zen Buddhist doctrine holds that “everyone is enlightened. What occurs at “enlightenment” is the falling away of the illusion that one is not enlightened. But the enlightenment has been there all along.” This is from a letter dated August 17, 1997. Putting this perspective into play in the earlier sentence, The ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment….we might get something like “The ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is the falling away of the illusion that one is not enlightened.”…it seems not quite right. But that partly depends on what one might mean by the term “excellence”, doesn’t it?
However, a version that follows my ultimate goal in the pursuit of enlightenment is excellence would be The ultimate goal in the pursuit of falling away of the illusion that one is not enlightened is excellence.”…also seems to be a better presentation.
Of course, there is nothing preventing Pirsig from having been comfortable with all of the possible associations within the proposal that the ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment. Even though the several notions that I’ve described are not exactly the same, they aren’t necessarily contradictory in nature. In fact, there is significant overlap despite the unique territory that each covers.
It seem to be an “and gate” situation. As, potentially, is the “pursuit of excellence” and “enlightenment”…each in the various possible meanings.
As a person moves toward expressing something they think/know/experience/comprehend/apprehend/understand, they are presented with the challenge to explore the words and word-orders that most suit their meaning. It is both a creative process and an exploratory process. It is a process which first brought Pirsig to explore “Quality” in his first book and then later to talk about Static Quality and Dynamic Quality, the established patterns (on the one hand) and chaotic cutting edge of reality (on the other).
Another Book to Consider Buying
Well, I will certainly be considering all of these terms and the relations and expect that they may form the basis of future Zensylvania territory. In the meantime…
In writing this essay, I realize that I have come dangerously-close to writing a book-review rather than my preferred intention to document only my own reactions to an original work. This is mostly due to the fact that On Quality: An Inquiry into Excellence is mostly NOT a new and original work.
Given what seems to have become for me a long-standing interest in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, I was very eager to obtain a copy of the follow-on Inquiry into Excellence as I hoped to obtain a significant quantity of new material and previously un-revealed insights. Unfortunately, there’s a lot less new material than there is re-printed versions of information that is already available. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t ANY new insights or collections of words that make the book worthwhile…it simply isn’t as robustly new as I would have preferred.
Still, I don’t regret the purchase. And I should send a significant thank-you to my daughter Chloe-Lynn for the fathers-day gift card which I used to expand my motorcycle-zen themed collection. And largely, that is the role that this Inquiry into Excellence plays for me today. It’s an artifact…and it is a kind of finger pointing to the moon.
The book was released for sale in April of 2022 and I received my first edition hard-copy several weeks ago. At 150-pages of relatively large-font print, I’ve only read through the book a couple of times so far but I intend to give it serious examination over the course of the summer.
Photographs
Throughout the book there are pictures of Robert Pirsig’s tools. According to the book’s preface, written by Robert Pirsig’s wife Wendy K. Pirsig, the photos were taken by David Lindberg – a nephew of Robert.
That brief paragraph offers the opportunity for observations about Pirsig’s writing and philosophy that I appreciate. First, consider the fact that the book was marketed as, at least in part, a collection of previously unpublished material by the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The book’s preface is credited to Wendy Pirsig, an individual with a direct family relationship to Robert, who died in 2017. Actually, what needs to be said is that Wendy is an individual with a kin relationship to Robert. The reason that this phrasing is important can be found in Chapter Five of ZAMM.
Clearly, David Lindberg also has a kin relationship with Robert Pirsig…and as an artist, his contribution is a collection of photographs of tools used by Pirsig. Tools serve an important function in the pages of ZAMM and also in our lives.
The handing-down of legacies (consider Footnotes to Being Water) has always been a massively important feature of individual and collective human endeavour. The handing down of tools – as artifacts and as useful means to achieve let’s say excellence…cannot be emphasized enough. Handing down a tool is:
handing down a culture;
handing down an artifact symbol of past survival and creativity;
handing down an artifact object to serve future survival and creativity;
Robert Pirsig’s tools are a symbol of his past and could be photographed as objects or picked-up and used for the practical purposes that Pirsig acquired and used them for during his life.
Finger Pointing to the Moon
The Inquiry into Excellence is a finger pointing to the moon as the majority of it’s work is as an exhibition to reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila. It is a hard-backed museum.
In the creation of On Quality, an artist has presented photographs of the tools which a person used in the living of their life. The creative act of photography was a dynamic quality act. The photographs are static quality products. Presumably those tools were objects which enabled Robert Pirsig to tune-up and maintain his Honda Super Hawk. Each tool was a kind of sacred object to those dynamic quality rituals he undertook. Now that Robert Pirsig no longer completes those tasks, they are artefacts of that past. They are patterns of static quality.
The photographs point to the dynamically-lived life of Robert Pirsig but they are a finger pointing to the moon. Of course all of these books are fingers pointing to the moon of Pirsig’s philosophy and way of understanding the living at the cutting edge of reality.
MOQ
Many people who choose to investigate On Quality will be interested, as I was, about any new text addressing the Metaphysics of Quality. I’m not going to outline every new or renewed thing I found in the book. If you’re interested, I hope that you’ll buy a copy and thereby contribute to the Pirsig family legacy.
However, there were several passages that engaged my attention that I want to feature in this essay. In a letter dated September 11, 1994, I found a passage which seems, I think to justify my observation that Pirsig’s philosophy was consistent with humanist enlightenment:
“Quality can be equated with God, but I don’t like to do so, “God” to most people is a set of static intellectual and social patterns. Only true religious mystics can correctly equate God with Dynamic Quality. In the West, particularly around universities, these people are quite rare. The others, who go around saying, “God wants this,” or “God will answer your prayers,” are, according to the Metaphysics of Qualty, engaging in a minor form of evil. Such statements are a lower form of evolution, intellectual patterns, attempting to contain a higher one….” (pg. 81)
Alfred North Whitehead
It’s quite a tough stance and frankly one that I think not only sets MOQ in alignment with Enlightenment ideals but is also consistent with notions that Alfred North Whitehead expressed in Process and Reality.
I am grateful that Wendy Pirsig and the editors of the book didn’t shy away from including this passage as it does positively establish a metaphysical position of the MOQ.
As a follow-on to that, Pirsig also suggests (c. 1995) that his MOQ solves a list of philosophical “problems”
The Metaphysics of Quality is valuable because it provides a central pivotal term that the Western, scientifically structured mind cannot dismiss. The second reason is for selection of Quality as a pivotal term is that is solve the “Two Worlds” problem of C.P. Snow, the division between the arts and sciences….“
The list goes on and I encourage you to obtain a copy of the book and examine the list. I am not certain of the extent to which I agree with Pirsig on his assessment. And that is not a coy way of saying that I disagree.
However, the work does rather go to Pirsig’s critics to do a good job of explaining how/why MOQ might (in good faith) be dismissed.
C.P. Snow
Dharma- Rta – Quality
Many critics of Pirsig’s metaphysics (as of any metaphysics whatsoever) may be expected to be come form those deeply-embedded in the physical sciences – biology, chemistry, physics and the like. On page 101, Pirsig is cited as writing that…”So far [readers seem] struck mute about the equivalence of the terms “Quality” and “dharma”, which are both derived from a common prehistoric root, “rta” meaning “the cosmic order of things.” The Buddhists have no trouble understanding that the dharma is the origin of things, but I think it’s going to take another century or two to convince Westerners that Quality is.”
It is very difficult, if not essentially impossible to approach a comment like that as anything other than a kind of soothsaying that can’t be evaluated. It will take another 150 years or so to know the extent to which Pirsig may be on to something. From my own outlook, I think that the field of biosemiotics seems to be most likely to reveal whatever truth there may be in Pirsig’s metaphysics and prediction.
Quality Undefined
Throughout ZAMM and much of Lila, Pirsig avoided providing a definition of “Quality”. On page 97 of On Quality, there is an excerpt from his 1974 lecture at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where he said that, “One of the advantage of keeping Quality undefined – which is central to [Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]…as long as you keep it undefined, then it becomes an instrument of change, and you can grow, because the things that you find Quality in are going to change as you grow.“
In this little book though, Pirsig’s use of the term Quality is equated, directly or indirectly with
God
the phoneme “rta” from the Proto-Indo-European language
the essence of experience
selection
meaning
dharma
the pure thing (Hindu traditions); the pure non-thing (Buddhist traditions)
“what holds together”
righteousness; rightness
the stable condition which gives man perfect satisfaction
duty toward self
virtue of the ancient Greeks
the Cosmic order of things
spirituality
Metaphysics of Quality is Metaphysics of Spirituality
the Tao
This is probably an incomplete list as Pirsig admitted to a preparedness to talk about Quality for hours on end without establishing a firm meaning.
On page 32 and running for about ten pages there is a delving of the phoneme “rta” as found in words like arete, art, right, rhetoric, arithmetic, aristocrat, virtue and more…this is from the proto-indo-European language. This is interesting as it establishes how words can be “cognate” with each other in descent from that common ancient language. In this case, ‘rta” or “rt” as a phoneme is seen to bear a fundamental meaning of rightness.
Clearly other language groups may have a different phoneme which would affirm something similar. Something about “rt” seemed to convey to a particular community of people that “rt” meant rightness at the most fundamental level. Just as “Ya” seems to indicate “yes/positive/affirmative” or “na” seems to indicate “no/negative/dis-affirmative” across many languages.
A term or word is only correct/useful insofar as it accurately and precisely identifies the object/phenomenon/event/idea that it is intended to identify. Pirsig’s preference to avoid defining “quality” was, as described a trick to maintain exploration and curiosity…but also as seen, it was placed (eventually) in the context of that single syllable meaning rightness.
But not as a judgement after the fact..rightness as a fundamental trait.
What Was I Looking For
When I purchased this little book, I was certainly looking for original material by Robert Pirsig that I hadn’t read before. Inevitably, that might have been some expansion of the work he’d begun in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila. But I found that I was also looking for further glimpses into what kind of a person Robert Pirsig may have been after having written these books. The largest clues come not from Robert Pirsig but from Wendy Pirsig. In the preface, she comments that a depression which followed the murder of Chris Pirsig, led to the delay in publishing of Lila. This indicates that Pirsig experienced a depression that lasted somewhere between 10 and 13 years. Perhaps longer.
She also wrote that Robert “contemplated other works, but they never materialized. His work in later years, involved maintenance of our home, the boat and the motorcycle he kept for the rest of his life.” This seems to be the boundaries of Robert Pirsig’s public persona. Boat. Home. Motorcycle. And, of course two books.
And that may be more than enough.
An Inquiry into Excellence is considered by Wendy to be a reminder of Pirsig’s “challenge to Western Philosophy and science to take on a study of Quality and stop thinking of it as vague and unworthy.“
This book focuses on the Philosophy and not on motorcycles or motorcycling. Neither does it focus on the literary side of ZAMM (and to a lesser extent, Lila). It may be inevitable that people will want to make the philosophy the focus as that did seem to be a central ambition of the book.
But as I’ve attempted to describe in my Footnotes essays, there is literary meat on the bones as well. The focus on the philosophy of the metaphysics can be seen as getting in the way of apprehension of the message. Stop looking at the finger and start looking at the moon.
Your experience of this moment right now is the cutting edge of reality. Just as Pirsig’s sentence “The ultimate goal in the pursuit of excellence is enlightenment. ” seems to me that it ought to be flipped to say “ultimate goal in the pursuit of enlightenment is excellence” consider what happens when you flip the question “What is the meaning of life?” to “Life is meaning.”
You don’t have a purpose. You are one of many purposes.
In William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, there is a collection of aphorisms titled Proverbs of Hell which purports to be the collected wisdom of souls in hell. Not surprisingly, there are several interesting proverbs which provide a kind of explanation of this essay and are presented here as a re-ordered selection.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires. If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. What is now proved was once, only imagin'd. You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. Enough! or Too much!
Original Essay
See Also
References & Notes
External Links
Original Essay
This essay is an extended musing about various motorcycle models that I’m considering as candidates for “My Next Bike” (MNB). In other words, it’s a kind of speculative and comparative shopping exercise. As such, it is a messy rambling of objective motorcycle specifications, subjective impressions and vague associations.
Before getting too-far into this, there are two preliminary comments that are probably worth including. First, there is no particular reason to assume that I will actually follow-through on a MNB purchase. There are all kinds of practical considerations and hurdles that make such an undertaking unlikely. Despite this, it’s still entertaining to consider what I might choose to do. Second, none of what follows is intended to suggest that there aren’t all-kinds of bikes that I rather enjoy looking at or reading about…but any number of reasons strike them from the list of bikes that genuinely qualify as an MNB prospect. For this individual, at this time, the MNB list is genuinely and honestly narrow.
MFB: 1983 Yamaha XJ550 Maxim
If you’ve read some of my earlier essays, or listened to the Zensylvania podcast, you may already know know the story of how I came to ride motorcycles and acquired my first bike – a 1983 Yamaha XJ550 Maxim. Purchasing that bike was largely a right-price-right-time situation. But it was also ended up being a happy situation that I don’t regret. While happenstance can sometimes have have happy results, often it doesn’t. So the MNB project is intended to take what I learned from a positive happenstance and turn that into a intended-to-be positive plan.
The (short) list runs (roughly) from what I consider to be the most-probable to the least-probable of candidates. The (non-ranked) factors that I included in this are: availability, cost, familiarity, design preferences.
Yamaha XJ Bikes
Yamaha XJ650 Maxim
As a result of my experience with the Maxim XJ550, very near the top of the MNB list are are a few other Yamaha XJ models. Currently heading that group is the XJ650 Maxim. The 650 appeals as a kind of continuation of that original experience. The fuel tank aesthetics and seating position are, for all intents and purposes, the same thing. And let’s be honest, among the most visually striking features of a motorcycle are the fuel tank aesthetics and seating. The XJ motorcycles were sold as either this cruiser-themed model with the sloped tank or as a sporting-themed model, called a Seca. The Seca has a more squared-off tank when compared to what was standard with the Maxims. The Seca models are also nice-looking bikes and earn a place in my regard, though they seem to be a bit more rare in my area compared to the Maxims. The Secas have a significant advantage of dual-front disc brakes.
Yamaha XJ650 Seca
The 650’s engine is a bit larger than my first bike’s engine. This neither pleases nor displeases me as the difference is relatively modest. What pushes the 650 to the top of my list is that is comes with shaft drive. And the idea of that pleases me a great deal. I prefer the reputation of shaft-drive bikes as cleaner and requiring less ongoing maintenance compared to chain-drive systems.
Considering my long-standing affection for Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a bit of philosophy-oriented literature, it may seem inconsistent to prefer a motorcycle which requires less maintenance. In ZAMM, the books narrator makes an explicit point that John Sutherland’s preference for shaft-drive and less maintenance is a concerning issue. The narrator (a version of Pirsig, himself) is observed over the course of the book to undertake maintenance and repair protocols to ensure that his bike’s chain is appropriately adjusted. In essence, it’s fundamentally linked to themes of the book and Pirsig’s attitude toward life. But I don’t necessarily agree with all of Pirsig’s assessments. From a practical and perhaps pragmatic standpoint…if given the choice between a system which requires frequent, if not quite continuous, attention and one that doesn’t…it seems to the better decision to choose the less-likely-to-fail system. Of course, that is dependent upon all other things being equal. Which they may or may not be.
I think that is true of life whether considering the purchase of a motorcycle or any matter where one may genuinely have the opportunity to choose. Choosing to make one’s life more complicated and more likely to fail (than it necessarily needs to be) would seem, at least to me, to require specific and particular benefits that outweigh the increased burden. A more complicated and failure-prone life without specific and identifiable benefits seems to be perversely self-indulgent.
So…about those XJ motorcycles….
These motorcycles were manufactured from 1980-1983, which is something of a downside as they’re getting quite old and finding a dependable one that hasn’t been previously abused or decayed is getting more and more difficult each year. The 4-cylinder engine is rated at 70-ish horsepower – about 50% higher than my 550 was – on a bike weighing about 450 pounds…some 50 pounds more than my fist bike. All I’d really need is to recreate the (for me) iconic purple flames and make sure the right style of handlebar were installed to achieve an upgraded continuation of my first bike experience.
Yamaha XJ 750 Maxim-X
Second place in my esteem to an XJ650 is a 1985/86 era Maxim 750 or Maxim 750X. Again with the shaft drive as a leading mechanical feature. As may be seen at right, these bikes have a slightly different aesthetic when it comes to the fuel tank. The tank is rather angular and sloped compared to the original Maxim’s curvy teardrop. I’m not completely certain whether I prefer it. I do rather like the look of the Maxim X engine. That engine is a bit larger again than the 650’s. Living in Ontario, Canada as I do – the fact that the 1985 and 1986 engines are 50cc larger than the equivalent US-market bikes make this model appealing to me as being a “Canadian-thing”. The regular Canadian-market Maxim in those years was an air-cooled 750cc rated at something like 75-80 horsepower. Meanwhile the Maxim X is a 90-horsespower liquid-cooled bike. At about 474 pounds, they’re still not significantly heavier than my first bike. I have actually sat on one of these bikes. I had been tempted to buy a midnight-blue one that was for sale close to home back in 2015.
The XJ1100 Maxim (featured at the top of this page) is the largest-displacement version of the XJ range that came to Canada. At 95 horsepower and 560 pounds, it is a much larger shaft-drive machine. This model was only manufactured in 1982.
Yamaha XJ 1100 Maxim
Focus on the XJ-family of bikes benchmarks my own satisfying experience of motorcycle ownership and riding from 2014 through 2016. Considering another model from the same family of motorcycles is a kind of acknowledgement that those first experiences were something that I wish to continue and extend. I’ve omitted mention of several XJ-family bikes not because I’m not aware of them (I am) nor because they aren’t terrific-seeming motorcycles (they are) – but because I don’t consider them to be genuine MNB contenders. They simply aren’t available in Canada. or otherwise don’t appeal to me.
Before continuing with the exercise, I must consider what is a “maxim”. The dictionary definition of maxim is that it is a general truth, a fundamental principle or a rule of conduct. It is interesting to me that Yamaha would assign a word of this kind as a name for the bike. It is an atypical name that draws on connotations unlike most (if not all) other motorcycles that I am aware of. What’s in a vehicle name? Well, when it isn’t a direct explanation of some detail of the vehicle – nothing other than connotations.
I enjoy the Maxim and connotation that a motorcycle purchase might somehow relate to a fundamental principle or rule of conduct. It seems in keeping with “motorcycle zen” that these notions should be present. “Maxim”, as a word also carries a slightly exaggerated masculinity; “maxim” connects to “maximum”. It’s a fullness. A most-ness. All-in. And then there’s the strange connection that Kelly-Jo (my wife) and I once owned a third-generation Nissan Maxima. We thoroughly enjoyed that car for several years. The three-litre VG30E engine was terrific and the car was the most luxurious we’d owned up to that point. Eventually there were problems (as there always are with cars) but it was an overall good vehicle ownership experience. All that to say – “Maxim” is a word that I rather enjoy.
Yamaha Radian: A leading contender as MNB
Rounding out my list when it comes to the Yamaha XJ Bikes is the 1986-1990 Yamaha Radian. Another unusual name for a motorcycle – a term from mathematics for the measurement of an angle based on the radius of a circle. Why name a motorcycle this – other than that it sounds kind of cool and the fact that motorcycles are, at a deep level, a collection of circles and angles?
Radians weren’t called “XJ” by Yamaha – they were called “YX”. I’m not entirely certain what justifies the separate designation. Perhaps the same thing somehow resulted in the FJ1100 not being called an XJ. Whatever. The Radian has the Maxim 550’s frame, an updated version of the 550 engine (598cc), weighed about 435 pounds and carried 66 horsepower. If not for that darn chain-drive, the Radian would be my leader in the pack. Still, if the right one were available at the right price and in the right place….the Radian would easily be MNB.
BMW K75
The BMW K75 is similar to the Yamaha XJ bikes in that they are shaft-drive bikes made in the 1980s. The BMWs were actually made from 1986 to 1995, which means acquiring one may mean a obtaining a bike slightly newer than an XJ-family bike. The K75 has a three-cylinder engine making 75 horsepower and the bike weighs 520 pounds.
With a fairing, the k75 can look rather nice, but honestly it’s not the best looking motorcycle I’ve ever seen. Remove the fairing or put the wrong fairing on and you’ve got a pretty odd-looking machine. Apparently it’s been nicknamed The Flying Brick in acknowledgment of the brick-looking motor hanging at the bottom of the bike. Aesthetically, it is distinctive.
If I found a clean-looking K75 that seemed like it wouldn’t require a bunch of money spent in get-it-on-the road maintenance work, it would definitely be an MNB option.
Moto Guzzi V7
Continuing with my stated thesis that shaft-drive makes more sense than chain-drive (yes, I have ignored belt-drive), a Moto Guzzi V7 is my top pick if I were willing to put down dollars for a brand-new (or significantly newer than thus-far reviewed) bike. It’s just about the only new shaft-drive bike that makes any kind of sense to me.
The v-twin motor is mounted such that a cylinder pokes-out on either side of the bike. It’s about 470 pounds and 52 horsepower.
When considering the Moto Guzzi benchmarked to my first bike or even an XJ650 – the numbers are comfortingly similar. The Moto Guzzi goes on the list largely because “it’s new” and therefore less likely to have decayed. But I’m very far from convinced that being new justifies the extra thousands of dollars that acquiring one would required. In 2020s-era dollars, an old XJ or EX can be purchased for $2k-$3k. Meanwhle, a Moto Guzzi would cost two to three times that money. And then there’s that whole “why buy something that will be more likely to fail” notion. Moto Guzzi is not known to be the most reliable product that one might purchase. Newness does not guarantee trouble-free-ness.
Still, I put it on the list as a rather improbable MNB candidate.
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You may have noticed that this essay (or episode if you’re listening) is titled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part Five. It’s part of an as-yet-indeterminate series of examinations of Robert Pirsig’s books. You may wish to go back to earlier parts of the series before taking this one in, but it isn’t obligatory in any way. You may also want to listen to take in the “On Footnotes” essay which is available on the website in print and is included in the first episode of this series. Just to get a sense of why I’ve titled so many essays in this way. But as I’ve indicated previously, it isn’t necessary to backtrack if you’re not inclined to.
Right now we’re going to take a look at Chapter Two of Pirsig’s book. At about nine pages, it’s a relatively brief chapter but it contains two of the books most memorable motorcycle-themed scenes and a number of interesting passages which reinforce Pirsig’s messages about self-reliance.
The chapter begins with a reminder that Pirsig and his companions have only just begun their motorcycle vacation. Similarly, the reader has only just begun exploration of Pirsig’s journey and philosophy as well. The first paragraph of the chapter says, “The road winds on and on….we stop for rests and lunch, exchange small talk and settle down to the long ride. The beginning fatigue of afternoon balances the excitement of the first day and we move steadily not fast, not slow.“
I interpret this as a kind of prescription by Pirsig for approaching both the reading of this book and for approaching life – remembering that the motorcycle journey is a metaphor for living life. It isn’t a terrible prescription to take breaks out from the business of life’s journey to stop for rest, meals and the small and inconsequential talk that doesn’t carry immediacy and import. To move steadily through life. neither fast nor slow is probably a good thing.
From the chapter sample that I opened this episode with, we can see that this thesis of steadily, neither fast nor slow is something Pirsig repeated near the end of the chapter. I appreciate how internally consistent Pirsig’s writing is. It isn’t merely repetition, it is reinforcement.
Typical of Pirsig, the next paragraph seems to continue about the motorcycle riding but actually introduces an ominous element…”Lately, there’s been a sense of something, as is we were being watched or followed…” If you haven’t read the book, my next comments may be something of a spoiler…but my presumption is that anyone following this series is either already familiar with the book or will appreciate that I’m trying to unpack Pirsig’s design as we go….this brief passage is a very early hint of a ghostly presence inside the narrator’s mind.
It’s a terrific bit of foreshadowing and reinforces one of my arguments that ZAMM may fairly be called a gothic story or ghost story. This is the introduction of a theme of ghosts and ghastly elements that will come up many times in the book.
In the third paragraph, Pirsig seems to break away again and takes time to talk about the flue flax blossoms in a nicely phrased, poetic line talking about the fields along the road, “Some of them are blue with flax blossoms moving in long waves like the surface of the ocean.” This mention of the ocean is also a bit of foreshadowing as Chris and the narrator do eventually arrive at the Pacific Ocean.
Photo Courtesy: Flickr
With the hint of ghostly presence and mention of the ocean, I am reminded of S.T. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I don’t think this is a far stretch….Pirsig is clearly conjuring maritime imagery in the next paragraph describing the plains ” as if you were siailing out from a choppy coastal harbor, noticed that the waves had taken on a deep swell, and turned back to see that you were out of sight of land.”
The ominous tone that Pirsig introduced is very effectively reinforced and then she says “I have a feeling none of us fully understands what four days on this prairie in July will be like.”
It’s quite a threatening statement which he moderately softens with memories of other trips and with discussion of the group’s planning. But the suspense and hint of tortures and trials to come is absolutely there.
And here I want to mention that ZAMM often recalls to mind the first part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, the Inferno. It’s a kind of invocation, isn’t it? Four Days on the prairie in the July Heat..a road that winds on an on…just as Dante and Virgil wound their way into Hell’s circles?
Dante’s Inferno Circles of Hell
ZAMM is absolutely in line with epic poetry traditions and it should be reinforced that Pirsig was absolely able to bring this imagery in without feeling the need to explain that this is what he was doing. ZAMM is Pirsig’s Divine Comedy…It is a story of his mid-life’s journey.
The narrator says of the trip through hell that he felt Sylvia should go along to maintain harmony among the riders…”to arrive after days of hard travel across the prairies would be to see them in another way, as a promised land..”
There is a break in the chapter and then Pirsig takes time to talk about some storm clouds on the horizon (another foreshadowing)..air temperature and weather play an ongoing role throughout the book..the inteplay between hot and cool..physical discomfort. “on a cycle you’re in the scene, not just watching it, and storms are definitely a part of it.“
The narrator’s comments about Sylvia being along for the ride through a hellish prairie may be a reminder of Dante’s goal to be united with Beatrice. But clearly Pirsig is taking a different tack and while Sylvia may be a kind of analog of Beatrice, clearly they are not the same. Suffice it to say, it is valuable to ponder who the narrator’s companions in this epic journey are and what function they may serve in Pirsig’s design.
Next comes an is an interlude wherein the narrator provides a kind of amusing anecdote of a father-son trip from Minnesota to Canada. This is interesting to me as my family and I spent several years living in Thunder Bay Ontario, the area that is immediately north of Minnesota and could have been a kind of destination of the trip. I’m certainly very familiar with the geography. While this is personally interesting, I think the reference to Canada is another one of Pirsig’s reinforcements. In American literature and popular culture, Canada is often presented as a kind of wilderness garden of eden…a promised land. A serene place to escape to. Perhaps this observation of American culture of mine is oversimplified. Be that as it may, The accuracy of this picture of Canada is highly questionable.
The anecdote is filled with rain, mishaps and misery…ultimately leading to an end of the trip when the narrator failed to diagnose an empty fuel tank. The story fulfills a number of tasks. These are storms of Rime of the Ancient Mariner or the horrible stations along Dante’s path.
It shows the narrator, and Pirsig as someone not unlike everyone else. He’s had failures and times when he was unprepared for the storms of life. To the point of being on the side of the road without gas and without even knowing he didn’t have gas.
To one extent or another, we all start out as a younger version of ourselves and without all of the knowledge and preparation to deal with the storms we will have to face. Literal and metaphorical.
I’ve found myself on the side of the road in a vehicle with no gas on a couple of occasions…once in the middle of a cold winter day…I’ve also found occasions to be on the side of the road variously lacking oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, power steering fluid and engine coolant. My point is that life can be complicated and as it gets more complicated, there are more things that can shut you down. Whatever the cause, being shut down can bring about a deep and genuine dejection.
Being shut down with no clue why you’re shut down is particularly awful. But it is the helplessness, whether you know why you’re shut down or not, that takes the toll…and this is what Pirsig describes…his son’s tearful questions of why the fun is all over are your tears….why am I shut down? Why can’t things move ahead.?
“But there weren’t any mechanics. Just cutover pine trees and brush and rain.” This is the emotional wilderness. No help from specialists who know what to do. No shelter from the storm. Just storm.
Pirsig said the machine they were on (no brand mentioned) was a “six-and-one half horsepower cycle, way over-loaded with luggage and way underloaded with common sense”.
Clearly the motorcycle trip into Canada is a metaphorical depiction of progressing through life. And its also a call to self-reliance and education…we have to learn how to live…how to make it through the storms, how to equip ourselves and be prepared.
The story is summed up with “Now we are on a twenty-eight-horse machine and I take the maintenance of it very seriously.” As life’s stakes are greater, we owe it to ourselves to take things a bit more seriously.
Right now, as you are living your life – whether you’re, metaphorically speaking, operating an 8-and-a-half-horsepower machine, a 28 horsepower-power machine, or the latest 125-horsepower high tech delight, I wonder how seriously you have taken the maintenance of that machine. And if that machine is not a motorcycle at all, but is in fact your own self, what has been your attitude to these things?
I wonder how seriously I’ve taken these things myself. There seems to be something in the world that doesn’t give much encouragement to giving serious consideration to maintenance. It’s either assumed to be irrelevant or presumed to be taken-care-of without effort or forethought on our part. But I’m not sure trouble-free-motoring has been a real thing for anyone. Ever.
Still, we seem to live in a world and a society that is predisposed to using things up rather than engaging with them as things to be conserved. This seems to be a fundamental feature of contemporary attitudes. And it does seem to be a genuine problem.
In the chapter, suddenly John cuts in (the character from the first chapter who we know doesn’t even want to think about maintenance…John who is heading into Hell’s circles ignorant and unprepared…to tell the narrator that they’d ridden past a sign for their turnoff…telling the narrator (and us?) that it was as big as a barn door.
Well it is big as a barn door isn’t it? Are you prepared for life’s storms? Have you been taking things seriously enough? Will you be able to diagnose when you’re gas tank, radiator, oil pan, brake fluid or power-steering fluid reservoir – or the complicated contemporary-life-reservoirs for which they are metaphors are empty?
The narrator’s realization of his inattention to the road…having missed the big as a barn door sign while pursuing his memories of the past trip set the narrator to checking his engine temperature. The narrator is shaken out of focusing on the past and tries to put his attention back in the moment. The here and now.
I want to take a moment to recall Pirsig’s mention in chapter one that country road sign makers don’t tell you twice…one may assume that this is true when the sign is as big as a barn door.
Soon however, a second set of memories takes hold of the narrator’s attention and a new lesson is investigated. It’s another of the most memorable motorcycle-themed scenes. It pertains to anyone who has needed to deal with mechanics. Mechanics, of course are the specialists who fit the motorcycle metaphor… the narrator’s story ought to be applied to all of the various specialists and professionals upon whom we give our dependence.
And we do give our dependence don’t we? Lawyers, doctors, psychologists, bankers, financial planners, plumbers, university professors, politicians,….all the contemporary specialists who we allow to to fix and perhaps sometimes even design our problems for us. These specialists and the problems they correspond to often set us on particular paths, don’t they? And rather like Pirsig’s narrator, it isn’t unusual to find ourselves lost in the memories of yesterday or the dreams for tomorrow rather than focussing on the road we’re riding on right now.
Well…anyone who has dealt with any professional, particularly a professional who clearly does not seem to know what they are doing will share the narrator’s frustration and concern. It’s one of the most valuable scenes in the book.
It talks about care;
about professionalism;
about people being engaged in what they are doing;
about being competent.
Right now, we are living the times that Pirsig is talking about. Do we give over our lives, that is to say place ourselves in a position of dependence upon these incompetent, uninvolved chimpanzees when there are big as a barn door signs that they’ve simply wandered in and been handed a wrench? After all, it is your motorcycle going home with you after you’ve paid the fees.
Pirsig runs through the clues and decides it is the expressions, “Good-natured, friendly, easy-going – and uninvolved…..you had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job”
These are the big as a barn door cues he ought to have noticed.
Pirsig then explains he is a technical writer and found the spectator attitude in the manuals…the separation…” And it occurred to me there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance, the most important aspect of all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant, or taken for granted.“
It bears repeating that the mechanics that Pirsig’s narrator recalled stand-in for all of the specialists who we give our dependence to. Lawyers, doctors, psychologists, social workers, politicians. I think you take my meaning.
You may have noticed that I have emphasized that I think it would be a mistake for me to claim to be an expert in anything at all. It isn’t that I necessarily view expertise as problematic…however, our relationships to experts seems, in my experience, to be very problematic indeed.
This caring about life, by ourselves about our own lives…or alternately by the specialists and professionals when we choose to be spectators rather than the primary agents of our lives, this caring is the central concern. And we need to approach this caring steadily, neither fast nor slow.
Spectator should remind you that the narrator mentioned that he felt someone was watching….a spectator. So the spectator theme arrives with two distinct, though not necessarily unrelated purposes….the ominous spectator that seems to be monitoring the narrator’s journey and being a spectator of one one’s own life. Naturally enough, in zen meditation there is a concept of observing your own thoughts.
I suddenly notice the land her has flattened into a Euclidian plan. …we have entered the Red River Valley….In the Zensylvania episode containing an incomplete examination of Fuzzy Logic, I spent some time connecting dots between Pirsig as a technical writer and the field of formal logic. Here is a big as a barn door sign that Pirsig’s writing is involved in logic and mathematics. Euclidian Plane1?
This just isn’t the kind of reference that one would normally associate with riding a motorcyle. This single sentence is, at least for me, validation of my argument that Pirsig has incorporated the language of mathematics and formal logic into the structure of Zen and the Art.
In mathematics, a plane is a flat, two-dimensional surface that extends indefinitely in all directions. The fact that the narrator describes the Red River Valley as a Euclidian Plane is very unusual and a very clear reference to Euclid, the ancient thinker and mathematician. We have to stop to think what Pirsig might be up to? It’s not an indiscrete reference. In fact it is big as a barn door. But its up to us to consider what that sign may be pointing at.
For me, I’m reminded of navigation and the first chapter of ZAMM when the narrator talks about dead reckoning. In the earlier Footnotes episodes, I’ve spoken about my opinion that the book that uses motorcycles as a metaphor for the self and a motorcycle journey as a metaphor for living life – and also that the idea of dead reckoning one’s way through life is quite an interesting way to think about how we navigate our way from one point to another of our human existence.
Earlier in this essay, we’ve seen how Pirsig continues to use these established themes to place the storms of life as a real presence in living a life. I’ve also said that Zen and the Art is Robert Pirsig’s analog to Dante Alighieri’s mid-life journey – the Divine Comedy. For Dante, his trip through the inferno was a series of descending circles. For Pirsig, the inferno seems to be a Euclidian plane – a flat, two-dimensional surface that extends unbroken in all directions. A featureless place devoid even of the sparse cover that a few cutover pine trees had offered during past trips. The fact that Pirsig used the language of mathematics to describe his inferno is not unimportant. It is, in fact, a part of Pirsig’s overall design. How indeed, does one navigate an unbroken, featureless wasteland which extends in all directions. Dead reckoning may well be a reasonable answer.
And with this very unusual and reference, the narrator – and of course Robert Pirsig, ends the rather ominous second Chapter of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Fuzzy Logic is a logical system which allows for degrees of truth. It allows for a world which is not either all on or all off. Fuzzy logic allows for the reality of a nearly infinite quantification of “some”. It is what allows us to ask, and answer, questions that begin with the words, “To what extent….”
Original Essay
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References & Notes
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Fuzzy Logic – A demonstration that the Buddha may reside in the circuits and gears of a transmission as readily as the top of a mountain or the petals of a flower…
Original Essay
In the summer of 2006, my wife and I purchased a brand new Mitsubishi Outlander SUV as our new family vehicle. That particular Mitsubishi Outlander was a first generation of the nameplate and it was built in Okazaki, Japan in July of 2005; but, it was sold to me about a year later in Thunder Bay, Ontario as a 2006 model. After fifteen years of owning, operating and maintaining this vehicle, I recently noticed, or perhaps simply recalled, that this little SUV uses something called “fuzzy logic” in the computer of its transmission. For some reason, that fact seemed to me to be an interesting and significant starting point for investigation. After all the term “fuzzy logic” seemed to be the kind of thing that someone might use to describe a decision-making process that they considered to be rather less than clear and pristine. And indeed, it occurs to me that life and reality are almost always rather less than clear and pristine. So I decided to delve the matter to learn more about what significance this “fuzzy logic” might have – to my car’s transmission and possibly also for me in my quest to live the kind of life I want to live and be the kind of person I want to be.
My Mitsubishi’s transmission is formally designated as INVECS-II, where INVECS is an acronym for Intelligent and Innovative Vehicle Electronic Control System. The roman numeral two following the acronym indicates that the transmission in my vehicle is actually the second generation (or iteration) of this declaredly intelligent and innovative system. Aside from setting the stage for a novel marketing literature tech-speak blurb, what the INVECS transmission does is continuously adapt the vehicle’s gear-shifting behaviour based on the vehicle driver’s style and the measurable road conditions. It is a dynamic rather than a static transmission system.
As may be predicted, this dynamic decision-making process reminds me of Robert Pirsig’s views about static and dynamic quality. These are central concepts to Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality….which is itself a kind of fuzzy (and by that I do mean, unclear) philosophy. At the moment, I’m not going to try to provide an explanation or analysis of Pirsig’s ideas on static and dynamic quality – but I think it is interesting that the fuzzy logic in my transmission may well provide insights into a Metaphysics of Quality (and vice versa).
For example, one of the most often referenced passages in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance says “The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a motorcycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha, which is to demean oneself.” This short passage demonstrates Pirsig’s extraordinarily consistent attention to the detail of his philosophy. And it seems like no small coincidence that the key feature here is a vehicle transmission.
For more than a hundred years, the internal combustion engine has been an intimate part of human societies and of global civilization. Whether one has any affection for these noisy, stinky, finicky, polluting monsters or not – the internal combustion engine has been a kind of partner and soul-mate to humanity during the twentieth century. The internal combustion engine (ICE) is so well beloved by people that automotive enthusiasts and automotive literature reach their most poetic, rhetorical and emotional heights when approaching the topic of vehicle engines. The devotion is very effectively religious in its enthusiasm (a term I apply in both its contemporary and its archaic sense0.
It might seem odd, then, that one of Zen and the Art’s most iconic passages refers to the gears of a motorcycle transmission rather than, for example, the valvetrain or carburetors of a motorcycle engine. Upon investigation, it becomes clear that the passage is written the way it is because it is consistent with Pirsig’s underlying philosophy. Simply stated, a motorcycle transmission is what allows progression of a static entity within the dynamic conditions of the real world. It is a real-time mechanical processor. Stated slightly differently, Pirsig clearly understood that an engine may well be the metaphorical heart of a vehicle – but the transmission is the brain. Actually using Pirsig’s terminology I’m going to suggest that the engine is the romantic mode of the motorcycle while the transmission is the classic mode.
How is it that a transmission is the brain of a vehicle?
An ICE works by burning fuel and oxygen and turning little explosions of energy into a rotating force…most ICE’s rotate from 800 rpm all the way up to 16,000 or more rpm’s. That is more than a vehicle’s wheels…so transmissions take the ICE’s rotation and converts that to RPM’s that make sense at the wheel. The earliest transmissions were manually-coordinated collections and quantities of gears which enabled a vehicle to translate engine power into faster and faster speeds. A person would monitor the real world conditions and preferences and change from one gear to another. The person made decisions that were translated into motion through the transmission. In effect a manually operated transmission accepts the inputs of power from the engine and decision from a human to deliver output to the vehicles drive wheel(s).
Many (certainly not all) people who ride motorcycles and cars enjoy being an active participant in the process….of knowing what is going on and choosing when and how gears are changed. Later, automatic transmissions were developed which eliminated the need for a person to decide, the transmission would automatically shift when particular conditions or states were reached. Getting back to the fuzziness of life and reality – being an active participant in the selection of gears means you choose the collection of gears intended to move you in your preferred direction.
This is, perhaps, one of the most profound and fundamental considerations that anyone can make about things. Because, almost certainly, whether you want to be active participant in decision-making or not – whether while operating a motorcycle or while managing other aspects of your life – this does not merely inform the kind of experience you may expect to have, it may also define the type of experience that you cannot have. For the most part, you really can’t coast along in a disengaged way with a vehicle equipped with a manual transmission and you can’t coast along in a life where you actively engage in your decisions. There is some effort involved.
It is something to think about. Personally, I earnestly recommend learning to operate a manual transmission (literally and figuratively).
Technological progress eventually resulted in automatic transmissions, which are a kind of static system wherein a narrow range of inputs produce set outputs. In an oversimplified way, achieving certain engine RPMs tells the transmission to shift to the next gear up (and vice versa). And then later, gears were eliminated completely in what is called a continuously variable transmission. This latter form of transmission not only removes the decision making, it removes even the pretense and underlying infrastructure that enabled individual decision making. There’s another profound observation about progress and modern society in that observation. If only one could tease out what that might be!
Regardless, in a traditional transmission, whether the gears are selected by a human being or by a computer, what we have is a system which responds to changing (dynamic) situations to select a preferred (static) pattern or gear to allow motion. An internal combustion engine only becomes an effective motor with the presence of a transmission.
How how does all that relate to fuzzy logic? The next bit starts get a bit more complicated…and much much fuzzier.
In my essay Footnotes to Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Part One, which is available in text on the Zensylvania website or as an audio podcast episode, I talked a bit about how that book’s title might be viewed as employing the language of logic. I argued that viewing the word “and” in the title Zen AND the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as signifying an “AND gate” from the language of formal logic can provide novel and valuable insights into Robert Pirsig’s philosophy and rhetorical approach. In other words, his story-telling technique.
An “AND gate” is a basic digital logic feature which describes a situation where a specific output is generated only when multiple specific inputs are provided. In other words, Pirsig’s title allows placement of “Zen” as one input and “the art of motorcycle maintenance” as a second input at the front end of a logic gate. The two are brought together for an output. In effect, they are synthesized.
As an aside, isn’t it interesting that a transmission serves as a kind of “AND gate” for the power produced by an engine and the decision making of an intelligent human or non-human decision-maker?
By viewing the book’s title, and the book itself, in this way might indicate that the output side of this “AND gate” view of Pirsig’s title may be the book’s subtitle “An Inquiry into Values” as the output side of the AND gate. Alternately, perhaps life itself is the other side.
As you may see, viewing the words, “Zen AND the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” via the language of mathematics and logic, is a playfully interesting and elegant demonstration of the book’s primary objective as presented in that subtitle. I want to keep that short phrase, “An Inquiry into Values”, in mind throughout this essay, as I think it may well be a defining detail or consideration not only for Pirsig’s book, but for other things as well.
A central theme of ZAMM , as well as Zen philosophy is a rejection of dualism. While I recognize that I am at risk of backing-up so far that we’ll all have forgotten that this was supposed to be an essay about fuzzy logic, it is a genuinely significant feature of my reflections and the position that I’m shuffling toward.
It is reasonable in Zen to argue that those two inputs that I mentioned, “Zen” and “The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, are not actually separate and distinct from each other. Viewing the title as an “AND gate”, as a point of synthesis makes this point explicitly. You just have to be familiar with the language and be open to reconsidering your perspective. I might also add that an “AND gate” may be construed as a process.
My non-expert depiction of an “AND gate” may be due some extra explanation and justification. And perhaps also some shared detail as to why I think that “fuzzy logic” is an interesting and potentially critical concept. Keep in mind as we proceed, that this is all in the spirit of Zensylvania’s non-expert status….and also, that what follows is a kind of the speculation of “fuzzy logic” as a concept to approach the integration of human experience, reality and decision-making while attempting to explain that speculation. I want to call it “living fuzzy”. As usual, yes we’re going to be a bit meta and a bit self-referential.
So let’s start with that “AND gate”. It comes to us from so-called Boolean Algebra. This is a form of algebra where the values of variables are so-called truth values of true and false. Well already we have a mass of terminology that threatens to shut many non-mathematicians and non-experts right down. But let’s have a look at what we have.
Algebra is a form, feature or branch of mathematics. It is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating those symbols. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that algebra is the syntax and grammar of the language that is mathematics.
Here in Zensylvania, we consider all language to be a form of metaphor. A situation where words, symbols, images and other tricks of language are used to describe the world. All of these tools are stand-in for things in the real even imaginary world. The word motorcycle is not a motorcycle. To say “Motorcycle Zen” is to say “Metaphor Zen.” Language is always a placeholder for some other thing. Often, but not always, a thing in the real world.
So for anyone who feels intimidated by algebra and mathematics…I really want to repeat that algebra is to math what grammar is to language. They are a way to explain the world. Algebra is what reveals the form, pattern and process of math. Math itself is a quantification of things. I want to suggest that mathematics is not the only language of quantification but I’m not entirely certain that is fully true. I’d need to use a kind of fuzzy logic to work that out. And I don’t want to get ahead of myself. At the least and for now, let me argue the more solid point that Boolean Algebra is not the only algebra.
Like any other language, mathematics is used to describe and explain things that we can observe in what we call the real world…and frankly, also in theoretic worlds. To say or write that Boolean algebra describes a world where the values of variable are so-called truth values of true and false is to translate algebra into a jargon-ridden version of the English language. But such is the delicate and imperfect art of translation….not to mention the delicate and imperfect task of explaining the world.
So what about that jargon?
Al-Kawarizmi
The word algebra comes from the Arabic word al-jabr, which is taken from the title of a 9th century book The Science of Restoring and Balancing by the Persian mathematician and astronomer al-Khwarizmi. Al-jabr meant the “reunion of broken bones”…or bone-setting. al-Khwarizmi used the term to refer to the operation of moving a term from one side of an equation to the other. As language is borrowed and shifted over time, our English-language version of the word “algebra” came from an Arabic term for a medical concept.
In effect the denotative meaning of the word “al-jabr”, which referred to a process of bringing together bones was al-Khwarizmi’s connotative metaphor for the process of bringing together mathematical symbols. Al–jabr became algebra. And algebra is the bones of mathematics. And you can see that the bones of mathematics is the structure, form or pattern of mathematics as I’ve already described.
Exploring the etymology of the word “algebra” is a wonderful example of how metaphor and language develop….but let’s get back to the Boolean algebra. As previously stated, Boolean algebra describes a world where the values of variable are so-called truth values of true and false.
From our example of the book title “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, the variables are “zen” on the one hand and “the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” on the other. In an algebraic sense, both of the values are assigned a truth value. Within Boolean alegebra, these variables are assigned truth values of either one or zero, where one is true and zero is false.
Boolean Algebra was introduced by the English mathematician George Boole in his first book The Mathematical Analysis of Logic in 1847 and set forth more fully in his An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, in1854. Charles Sanders Peirce, who coined the term “pragmatic philosophy” and founded the field, gave the title “A Boolean Algebra with One Constant” to the first chapter of his “The Simplest Mathematics” in 1880.
Charles Sanders Peirce
For those interested to follow the trail we’ve described, we can go from al-Khwarizmi to Zensylvania along the following path: from al-Khwarizmi to George Boole; from Boole to Charles Sanders Peirce. From Pierce to William James and then on to Alfred North Whitehead down to F.S.C. Northrop (who we’ve not yet spent much time on) and arriving at Robert Pirsig and thereby to yours-truly and the Zensylvania Podcast.
One of the most famous lines from Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance goes “The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha – which is to demean oneself.” It seems only fair to give Pirsig and his writing reasonable credit for being not only aware of the language of Boolean Algebra, but also educated about its uses and implications. In fact, it is reasonable to observe that Boolean algebra has been fundamental in the development of digital electronics of his day. Pirsig was, after all, a technical writer in the field at the time.
My suggestion that Pirsig referenced a Boolean “AND gate” is, as I hope that I’ve demonstrated, a reasoned and reasonable suggestion.
The subtitle of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is “An Inquiry into values”. In Boolean algebra, where variables are assigned truth values, usually denoted 1 and 0, true and false respectively. It seems to me that Pirsig would have been supremely aware of the consistency between his motor-cycle themed inquiry and Boolean Algebra concepts.
In Boolean algebra, an “AND gate” is a conjunction. The and of a set of operands is true if and only if all of its operands are true. All elements have to be present for something to be considered “true”. We’re not going to run that down much more than that right now because that is the central matter that Pirsig worked with and that we need to contrast with “fuzzy logic”.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) and Intelligent Decision Maker (IDM).
So what is “fuzzy logic”? Contrast the picture of truth that Boolean algebra presents, that variables are assigned truth values of 1 or 0, true or not true with the situation where Fuzzy logic allows that the truth value of a variable may be any real number between 0 and 1. Think about that…a real number between zero and one. Degrees of quantification.
As a sidebar, isn’t it wonderful that mathematics is capable of employing both real and imaginary numbers? Thank you Rene Descartes.
With fuzzy logic, there is a logical system which allows for degrees of truth. It allows for a world which is not either all on or all off. Fuzzy logic allows for the reality of a nearly infinite quantification of “some”.
Alfred Tarski
The term fuzzy logic as the formal designation for a mathematical process was introduced with the 1965 proposal of fuzzy set theory by and Azerbaijani scientist named Lotfi Zadeh. The underlying concepts had been studied since the 1920s under the slightly different term infinite-valued logic by the Polish mathematicians Jan Lukasiewicz and Alfred Tarski. That term “infinite-valued logic” simply says that there are an infinite number of things that can influence an outcome. I highlight this as a way to emphasize that fuzzy-logic and infinite-valued logic are, before anything else, a rejection of either/or dualism. I’m sure there are experts in the field who may be motivated to offer some tidying up of the history and facts here…but I’m happy to keep it all a bit fuzzy.
Fuzzy logic derives its fuzziness from the fact that people make decisions based on imprecise and non-mathematical information. Mathematics is not the underlying language of human decisions making. At least, not in the way that most of us conceptualize mathematics. Fuzzy models or sets are a mathematical way to represent and systemically account for the vagueness that is inherent in, well, everything. These models have the capability of recognizing, representing, manipulating, interpreting, and utilizing vague, uncertain information. The kind of information that fills the reality of living.
Boolean Algebra, “AND gate” propositions, like other all-or-nothing propositions are convenient in their ability to cut through clutter with an absolute proposition. In some situations, a simple yes/no framework makes decision-making easy. Easier yes/no frameworks make, however, for un-subtle and often un-reflective decisions. One only needs to look at Canadian “first-past-the-post” electoral design to observe the limitations of a binary system applied to a world that is much more varied and complicated. Often in Canadian electoral results, the largest localized minority-share-of-the-vote political party wins, leaving the majority of citizens disappointed and disenfranchised.
But politics aside, consider the regular day-to-day decisions and adjustments we all have to make where proportions matter, where degrees of truth is a valid and useful concept, where there is more than just a go-no/go proposition. Do you to into the shower using ONLY hot water or only cold water? Or do you use a mix the two? A fuzzy model allows for a nearly infinite range of answers to the question of how much hot water to use. A fuzzy model includes a multiplicity of yes/no propositions in context of each other. That is how a fuzzy model provides a more accurate and appropriate picture of the world.
Let’s get back to my Mitsubishi’s transmission. On the website of the Society of Automotive Engineers, there is an abstract of an article written by Katsutoshi Usuki, Kenjiro Fujita and Katsuhiro Hatta that provides an insight into fuzzy logic that is as insightful and useful as it is dry and, a least superficially, uninspiring. What I am providing is a abridged version to focus on what strikes me as insightful to Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality and to this incomplete investigation of Living Fuzzy. Usuki, Fujita and Hatta wrote that Mitsubishi Motors developed the INVECS automatic transmissions with electronic controls which incorporated a shift-schedule control that allowed gear selection in response to driving condition and the driving habits of individual drivers. These transmissions also included a so-called “sporty mode” which allowed the driver to choose a dynamic drive feel as if operating a manual transmission….but without the clutch. In other words dynamically selecting gears in response to the conditions they experienced and based on their priorities.
For anybody who rides a manual transmission motorcycle or has driven a manual-transmission car, you will be familiar with the need for progressive braking and the need for a controlled and sensitive balance of clutch and throttle. Get it wrong and operation of the vehicle can be a frightening and violent situation. All kinds of bucking and gnashing can go on. You also know that driving conditions such as how wet or dry the road surface is, how fast you’re going, the RPMs of the engine, whether you’re entering a turn or in a straight…all of these affect how and how much clutch, brake and throttle may be used to keep things in control. It’s a dynamic situation. There are degrees of truth. Perhaps some brake but not all of the brake. Perhaps the the clutch needs to be let out a tad more quickly, but not too much more quickly.
The INVECS transmission in my SUV incorporated a shift-schedule control that allowed gear selection in response to driving condition and driving habits of individual drivers. These transmissions also included a so-called “sporty mode” which allowed the driver to choose a dynamic drive feel as if operating a manual transmission….but without the clutch. In effect, the intelligent transmission in my SUV acts as I would act when operating a manual transmission. It does this literally as it learns my driving preferences and it does this metaphorically as it changes the gears based on dynamic, real world variables that may call for some brake or a bit more sharpness in the release of the clutch.
How does the fuzzy logic do this…unlike Boolean algebra which uses truth value of zero or one, fuzzy logic allows for a wide range of inputs which can produce outputs that fall somewhere between zero and one. I want to say that it provides the possibility of degrees of truth which ranges from completely false to complete true but includes the possibility of concepts like somewhat true, partially false, largely true…and so on. It is a kind of spectrum of truth that is contingent upon the contexts and contingences within which it exists. Frankly and simply, it allows for the real world. Within fuzzy logic, truth is inherently not binary. It is not dualistic.
The INVECS transmission feels the road conditions as I might feel the road conditions…and to an extent, I as the vehicle operator are one of the conditions the transmission feels. Different drivers behave differently and the transmission allows for that variability…the distances between 0 and 1….the driver with a heavy foot and the driver who is more casual.
For those who may not relate to all of this motorcycle and transmission information as a meaningful metaphor, let me suggest that many, if not all, of the daily decisions of life are an individual’s reactions to the conditions of the metaphorical road- that-is-life and the person’s individual preferences at any given time. Sometimes we may want to go along quickly and efficiently. Sometimes we may want to proceed with low-speed caution…and sometimes we may get a bit of a thrill from spinning our wheels.
In his Metaphysics of Quality, Robert Pirsig described “dynamic quality” and “static quality”. Static quality is something that can be defined and, I might argue responds well to Boolean algebra. The “AND gate” applicability of a definable “ZEN” and a definable “Art of Motorcycle” works with static quality. Pirsig’s “dynamic quality”, his so-called cutting edge of reality does not. Dynamic quality works better with “fuzzy logic”.
Alfred North Whitehead on the other hand had a Philosophy of Organism which describes “actual occurrences” and “actual entities”. Dynamic Quality, this cutting edge of reality is the reality process which Whitehead depicts.
A more sales-oriented version of the Mitsubishi story….says the INVECS-II automatic transmission simultaneously provides driving pleasure and operational economy…1st gear is the low range to be used when power is required. 5th gear is the high range and provides optimum fuel economy and quietness of operation. The other gears allow vehicle operation in response to existing road conditions or driver preferences and style. When the INVECS-II is used in the automatic mode, all shifting decisions are made by the on-board computer. This permits safe and easy driving. The same computer exercises control over the engine during shifting to provide the highest possible shifting quality. For enhanced driving pleasure, the INVECS-II has a sports mode that allows the driver to take control of shifting decisions.”
The INVECS transmission sets out truth variables as ranging from on the one hand “when power is required” (first gear) and when the “optimum fuel economy and quietness” are preferred. It is a system which is based on efficiency use but also driving pleasure.
Which brings us back to Pirsig and an inquiry into values. Pleasure. What is considered good? Power or optimum fuel economy and quietness”. What is “good” is different, or dynamic, based upon the conditions. There is a range or degree of what is good between these two ends. It is an extremely improbable journey, if not impossible one where “power” is completely and continuously preferred over “optimum fuel economy and quietness” or vice versa.
I am also struck by the observation that enhanced driver pleasure is recognized by the engineers when they are actively engaged in the decision making process…this is a metaphor of life. We derive more pleasure in our life when we are actively involved in the decisions…even when the variables that may affect them are infinite in quantity and entirely unclear.
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What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Chapter One
The brief passage from Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that we’ve opened this episode is a particularly relevant sentiment to what the Zensylvania podcast and website is all about – this awful experience where time just keeps passing in a monotonous and wasteful blur that never seems to give us a chance to just think and talk. Zensylvania is taking the time to talk before all the time is gone.
You may have noticed that this essay (or episode if you’re listening) is titled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part Four. It’s part of an as-yet-indeterminate series of examinations of Robert Pirsig’s books. For now, I’m still looking at the book’s first chapter. You may wish to go back to earlier parts of the series before taking this one in, but it isn’t obligatory in any way. You may also want to listen to take in the “On Footnotes” essay which is available on the website in print and is included in the first episode of this series. Just to get a sense of why I’ve titled so many essays in this way. But as I’ve indicated previously, it isn’t necessary to backtrack if you’re not inclined to.
Right now, we’re going to continue to look at the first chapter beginning immediately after the narrator comments on the the impossibility of trying to communicate to the lost children he often sees trapped on bumper-to-bumper highways. In my highly marked-up white-covered edition, I’m picking up on page seven and plan in this inquiry to finish up examination of the first chapter. There are still several foundational passages in this eleven or twelve pages of the book that are important to cover and I think we can hit the big highlights and let much of the text speak for itself. However, for the sake of brevity, I’m also setting aside comment on some passages as they seem to be mostly reinforcing of themes already established. In the earlier parts of this series, I’ve commented on these things and, rather like Pirsig’s country-road-signmaker, I’m going to avoid pointing out the same features twice.
Image Courtesy of hearts2nature.com via search engine image search.
Given the frankly devastating assessment of contemporary society that the narrator offered in the earlier passage (contemplated in Part Two of these explorations), Pirsig opted for the next passage to be an echo of some imagery shared earlier in the chapter. It’s a kind of respite to see the beauty of some red-winged blackbirds and marshes after being exposed to the going-nowhere superhighway that is the narrator’s contemporary society. In this passage, the narrator corrects his earlier assertion that marshes are benign and states that they are also cruel. This correction brings his depiction of marshes in-line with a balanced Zen perspective – neither positive nor negative. This is the source of the comment that the “reality of them overwhelms halfway concepts.” It is through comments and phrases like this, worked into the texts but not especially emphasized as doctrinal comments, that Pirsig has included zen influence.
There’s also a repetition of the interaction between the father and the son. In the face of being unable to communicate to the lost children on the superhighway, the narrator, almost reflexively attempts to communicate to the person closest to him.
Then there’s an interesting and brief paragraph which explains that “unless you’re fond of hollering, you don’t make great conversation on a running cycle.” Its interesting for several reasons. First, we’re about to learn that most of the book is a kind of monologue preached by the narrator from the seat of the motorcycle. Texts of various sorts, whether they are printed on a page or shown on a screen of some kind are not dialogues. They are monologues. We may be entering a time when texts may become dialectic in nature. That will be interesting and technology such as podcasting, social media and artificial intelligence suggests how that may evolve – but for now, we are mostly limited to monologues. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a monologue.
William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury: an experiment in stream-of-consciousness. I preferred As I Lay Dying, but that’s commentary for a different essay.
Second, inspected from the notion that the cycle is a metaphor of the self – there is a question of what Pirsig may be suggesting about the act of talking about the self and talking about maintaining the self? This comment, that one doesn’t make great dialogue on a running cycle, seems to be consistent with his more general comment about there not being opportunity to talk that I opened this essay with. Living our lives we are, metaphorically speaking, overwhelmed by noise of our own running cycles, we’re all two busy and bombarded by the noise and activity of life to talk. For my own part, this observation recalls the title of William Faulkner‘s 1929 stream-of-consciousness novel titled The Sound and the Fury and thereby William Shakespeare’s lines in Macbeth ” Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.“
While we haven’t yet reached the point when we talk about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a kind of gothic ghost-and-monster story…this passage is certainly supportive of the theme I expect to eventually explore. Pirsig’s book carries, in it’s own rights a kind of stream-of-consciousness inspired narrative and Faulkner would not have been a writer unfamiliar to Pirsig, so I feel relatively safe in these observations. The paragraph can and should be read for its metaphorical value and weighed in context of these metaphorical and referential settings.
I wonder how rare it is for people to have an opportunity to engage in dialogue not only about living their lives, the engine, wind and road noise that make up our lives, but also about the maintenance that makes living endurable and even joyful, enabling us to take note of the flocks of red-winged blackbirds that sometimes rise up? This question is one that Pirsig takes up later in the book and it is valuable to take note of the matter now.
Over the decades, I have frequently commented to others who I felt might value the observation that I have found Stoic philosophy to be a valuable tool in managing the noise of life. While I don’t intend to attempt to describe any overlap between Zen and Stoicism at this time, it seems clear that Pirsig sets Zen forward as a tool for managing the noise and business of life. It is difficult to talk about these tools and how they work while undertaking the regular business of life. They are perspectives that we sometimes need to administer to self-correct when we have been in error. Rather like the narrator’s self-correction about the nature of the marshes.
The paragraph that follows is an exposition of this theme and an explanation of what Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is going to be.
“What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important.“
It’s a wonderful and direct passage. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve encountered the idea that people are genuinely and overwhelmingly busy, often with things that they may find contain little to no meaning for them six days later, let alone sixty years. Life in the 2020’s seems to be far more busy, far more filled-up and distracted by a kind of empty technology-fueled activity and commotion. The screens and phones are a kind of external symptom or avatar for transitory emptiness.
The narrator then goes on to explain that it is his intention to share his thoughts in a series of Chautauquas. The narrator says that he doesn’t have another word for this, but I’m going to go ahead and share some now: meditations, studies, sermons, inquiries, essays, ruminations and indeed….closest to home here in Zensylvania is the word footnotes.
Pirsig used the term Chautauquas as a nostalgic link to a social movement that had been popular at the turn-of-the-18th-century. These were travelling tent shows that brought insightful ideas and educational recreation to average, non-academic people. I think he’s done this to distance Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance from formal Academia (what he later calls the Church of Reason) and organized religion (which Pirsig does not need even to term the various Churches of Faith). Buried in this metaphor is a significant differentiation. The Chautauqua movement featured tents – they were itinerant in nature. The Churches of Reason and Faith more typically emphasize bricks-and-mortar. This distinction is explored in later chapters of the book.
It is a kind of populist strategy but it is also a strategy which put Pirsig in the camp of the sophists. The sophists were the chosen intellectual bad guys targeted by Plato and those that followed in Academia. They were advocates of rhetoric and a variety of itinerant educators of their day. Most institutions of civilization have developed in ways that oppose anything that is not rooted or stabilized in some way. Nomadism is mostly, if not wholly distrusted and rejected. And yet, vacations are a highly valued feature or part of most people’s lives. For brief periods of their lives people are pilgrims and nomads. Exploring geography, culture, recreation and other things that they value. It is rather interesting thing that the things we value most are so often the thing we have the least of.
Pirsig and his companions are on vacation and during their vacation, some of their time is indeed under canvas.
To understand the significance of this Pirsig’s evident siding with the Sophists, we have to recall that Plato and Aristotle may be considered the founders of formalized European, or more broadly western, intellectual pursuit that we call Academia or Academics. The Academy was theirs. Pirsig is establishing ZAMM as essentially a non-Academic and perhaps anti-Academic endeavour.
You may find it interesting to know that there is a Chautauqua Institution located in, Chautauqua New York. The organization began in 1874 and was the inspiration for the Tent Chautauquas that Pirsig cited. It is an extremely interesting co-incidence that the organization was founded exactly 100 years before Pirsig’s book was published and almost exactly one hundred years after the founding of the United States as a country. Although these details are not discussed in Zen and the Art, it seems unlikely that Pirsig would not have been aware where his work was situated relative to these facts and events.
If you’ve already read ZAMM and might like a follow-up inquiry, try Mark Richardson’s book.
I also think that a visit to the Chautauqua Institution would be a sensible pin to put in the map for anyone who might want to consider an ideological road-trip of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. There are many people who attempt to travel the same roads that the journey describes. The book and route has its own pilgrim-based-industry. Canadian automotive journalist, Mark Richardson published “Zen and Now: On The Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” in 2008. The book is a personal telling of Richardson’s experience of the motorcycle journey that Pirsig described in his book. While Richardson’s book is clearly less of a work of Zen or philosophy than Pirsig’s, it is an interesting homage and worth reading for the nicely-researched journalism that he includes. For those who may be interested in a different kind of pilgrimage, there are some alternate Pirsig-inspired routes that might be just as fascinating and meaningful to explore.
The narrator talks about his personal Chautauquas as a kind of channel-deepening and uses the metaphor to contrast perspectives on fast-running, shallow and wide modern rivers of thought versus deeper and slower streams. The metaphor is consistent with the “streams of consciousness” terminology I mentioned earlier. The passage is vivid and Pirsig does make use of bodies of water throughout Zen and the Art as well as more prominently in the follow-up Lila; the earliest reference to bodies of water was the marshes and duck-hunting sloughs, later the riders will come upon other bodies of water as well with the ultimate geographical destination in the motorcycle journey is the Pacific Ocean. Pirsig uses water. We will want to observe how and when these references occur because they are unlikely to be mere settings.
Then comes a break in the sermonized philosophy when the group of riders takes a break at a rest-stop. At the stop, the narrator introduces John and Sylvia Sutherland. Consistent with the in media res beginning of the book, the introduction of the Sutherlands jumps into the established and ongoing relationships that the narrator has to the Sutherlands as individuals and as a couple.
During the events of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the Sutherland’s ride a BMW R60/2. Interestingly, Pirsig does eventually mention the bike by brand, model-name and country of origin. This is a significant difference from how he references his own bike. Superficially, this seems like it could be an irrelevant detail. But I don’t think so. The narrator’s motorcycle is a metaphor of his self. It is an avatar. Were Pirsig to spend significant time talking about the brand, model-name and country of manufacture, this would erode the unity of the character and the bike. It would introduce a duality that Pirsig is careful to minimize. Specifying these things for the Sutherlands, however is consistent with a separation of the rider from the machine- consistent even with the alienation from technology that the narrator later describes.
BMW produced the R60/2 model from1965 to 1969. It had a 30-horsepower 600cc boxer twin engine with shaft drive. It weighed about 430 pounds. Pirsig’s Honda SuperHawk had a 28-horsepower, 305cc parallel-twin engine and weighed about 350 pounds. Pirsig’s bike had chain-drive. Considered from 2020, they’re both nice-looking classic bikes. The BMW was all black. There are short and engaging videos of these kinds of bikes where you can hear the terrific mellow sound of the BMW or the chattery “nickels and dimes” (as Pirsig calls it) sound of the Honda. In the book, it is eventually explained that Sutherland chose the bike for reliability, to avoid having to do maintenance. Something not explained in the book is that the BMW was designed with side-car use in mind. This makes the R60, to a certain extent, akin to cars.
It would have been entirely possible for Pirsig to alter the details of some things in the story. It is striking, however, how conveniently some facts, such as the characteristics of the specific make and model of his friends’ motorcycle, support and reinforce Pirsig’s rhetorical intent. It’s a detail of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that is so unusually, and sometimes disturbingly, compelling.
Metaphorically what does the choice of a BMW R60 mean.? It is a contemporary preference to let “experts” design and maintain your motorcycle rather than taking direct and personal responsibility for these things. Later in the chapter, the narrator depicts a kind of paranoid helplessness that the approach leaves a person vulnerable to when Sutherland admits thinking that the motorcycle dealership sold him a lemon. Sutherland does not understand the technology he engages with, does not really want to understand it and this is a foundation of his relationship to it.
Always with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, we must recall that motorcycles are metaphorical stand-ins or avatars of our selves. How often do we find that we do not genuinely understand our own workings. The working of our minds and bodies…and don’t want to understand them. But feel that we are vulnerable to forces outside of our control and prefer to hand over responsibility for maintenance to a professional of some kind. Oh yes, this issue will be coming up in the book.
It is rather odd and interesting that the rest-stop the riders are at includes a reference to grassy knoll. There is something jarring and out of place about this. John F. Kennedy’s assassination was too recent in American history for this particular turn of phrase to be random. The terminology and the reference conjures….suspicion, conspiracy and cover up. Kennedy’s assassination was a kind of turning point in American history. It may be reasonable to assume that Pirsig is acknowledging suspicion and distrust as fundamental elements of the contemporary American experience. In 2020, we can only reflect upon whether that turning point in American history, whether the inclusion of suspicion and distrust in daily life, has continued and grown in any way.
Image Courtesy of Search Engine
Soon after the diversions of the rest-stop, the narrator states the idea for the book stemmed from a conversation with John Sutherland about “how much one should maintain one’s own motorcycle.” It is clearly a discussion where Sutherland preferred to leave maintenance to specialists while the narrator favored self-reliance…bearing the labour and responsibility himself. He says that he prefers to make use of the small tool kits and instruction booklets…if we return to the ongoing metaphorical patterns…motorcycle maintenance is caring-for or stewarding the self. While I hope that my reminders haven’t yet become tedious, it is essential to keep in mind how these ideas apply to self-maintenance. So the narrator is referring to a kind of spiritual maintenance. Being literal, a person might say that they don’t recall getting a tool kit or instruction booklet as a guide to this spiritual maintenance. I think, however, that most people can work with a metaphor of this type and expect such a tool kit and instruction booklet to be comprised of something other than forged metal on the one hand and printed paper on the other.
The narrator explains that he and Sutherland rode together and spent time talking and drinking beer. The frequent references to alcohol consumption amid motorcycling is one of frankly several details that makes some contemporary readers of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance uncomfortable. I don’t think it needs to. My attitude on this is that I expect Robert Pirsig’s 1974 self to occupy 1974 – not 2024. If the story is fifty years out of place on some things, that’s OK by me. Frankly the book and its ideas aren’t particularly more or less interesting if these kinds of quibble-factors are set aside.
Earlier the narrator lamented that there wasn’t enough time to talk; the focus on the talking is a necessary repetition or reinforcement that the book, the Chautauquas arise from interactions with the Sutherlands. During their conversations, when they talk about external and circumstantial things, everything is pleasant but when their conversation touches on things closer to home. Specifically motorcycle maintenance, the conversation is awkward or stopped. Pirsig compares the conversational blockage as being similar to doctrinal disagreements between Protestant and Catholic attitudes. The underlying point is that there are different values systems at play. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an inquiry into values, so these comments shouldn’t be taken as casual. Pirsigis moving attention the question of he source of the “the good” . Is it divine or something else.
There’s a memorable passage where the narrator describes Sutherland’s struggles with his motorcycle – all stemming from his lack of understanding of how the bike operates. These uncomfortable and yet amusing scenes occurred near Savage, Minnesota.
Image Courtesy of Someone Who Wanted to Sell a Suzuki Savage at Some Point – It’s an image that captures what a Suzuki Savage is.
Since Zen and the Art of Motorycles does touch on motorcycles…I have to comment on that word Savage.
One of the earliest motorcycles models to catch my attention and interest was the Suzuki Savage. It’s a 650cc single cylinder, belt-driven bike which Suzuki later called the S40. I think the name change was disappointing, so I still think of the model as the Suzuki Savage. These bikes were Manufactured since 1986. While I’m not sure whether new models are still sold in Canada, I believe they’re still manufactured and sold in various other markets. The bike is about 381 pounds and about 30 horsepower. Comparing it’s specifications to the R60 and SuperHawk that Pirsig and Sutherland rode, it seems like a contemporary bike well-suited to representing a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance homage. For anyone who might be looking for a place to start, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to think about finding one of these.
Shortly after the scene, Sutherland tells the narrator that the frustration of the motorcycle not starting “really turns me into a monster inside.” and goes on to describe paranoia….suspicion, anger and frustration…..these are important observations as our contemporary world seems to have more and more things which turn us into monsters inside…things that dehumanize us and leave us acting out like a savage…prone to suspicion, anger and frustration.
Via a lengthy depiction of a leaky faucet in the Sutherland’s home – a faucet which seems to act on Sylvia Sutherland the way John Sutherland reacted to his motorcycle, the narrator names technology as the root cause of their frustration, alienation, resentment and anger. Similar to a motorcycle, a home is a wonderful metaphor to capture human experience and endeavor. Anybody who has pretended to ignore a leaky faucet or some other inconvenience out of fear and dread can relate to the anecdote and readily think about the metaphor’s meaning to human experience. There are things in our lives that we accept, tolerate or pretend to ignore based on fear, dread to not make things worse. Often for want of understanding some underlying design issue and perhaps some training and tools to fix it.
Image courtesy of search engine image search.
The narrator blamed technology…perhaps in my own contemporary language, I suggest it is ill-preparedness to manage ever-escalating and ever-more incomprehensible complexity. Much of the world is a kind of black box that we don’t really understand….“it is a kind of force that gives rise to technology, something undefined, but inhuman, mechanical, lifeless, a blind monster a death force.“
Then also …”their monster keeps eating up land and polluting their air and lakes, and there is no way to strike back at it and hardly any way to escape it.”
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has elements of a gothic ghost and monster story. As with Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein, the concept of monster is closely tied to technology and humanity. Pirsig locates the monsters within our own nature.
There’s an interesting passage where the narrator returns to the theme of lost children and states that the Sutherlands are not alone in their alienation. “If this is so, they are not alone.…so that when you look at them collectively, as journalists do, you get the illusion of a mass movement, an anti-technological mass movement, an entire political anti-technological left emerging, looming up from apparently nowhere saying…Stop the technology….but one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term.”
This passage in the book carries some interesting insights into issues of the 2020’s and it might be well for heed Pirsig’s comment that “one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term“. Name-calling really is a waste of time, isn’t it?
It is hear, near the end of the first chapter, that Pirsig delivers the most memorable and often-cited lines in the book:
“I just think that their flight from and hatred of technology is self-defeating. The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha – which is to demean oneself. That is what I want to talk about in this Chautauqua.”
In the theory of writing short and long fiction, it is often taught that a writer should build to climax point and then provide a denouement, or falling off. Imagining a graph of reader excitement and interest, one sees a line sloping up and to the right, perhaps with a few stock-market-esque peaks and valleys. Well that line is the chapter’s climax point. Everything else has been leading to this particular statement. And it is the thing that the book is most remembered for.
That sentence does hold the scope and aesthetic intent of the book if you know what to look for. Buddhism is there. Philosophy is there. A position on contemporary technology is there. The motorcycle as metaphor is there. A position on academia is there. A statement of values is there. The sentence is like a central nerve with tendrils strung into all parts of the book.
As for the denouement…
then we’re out of the marshes….The farmhouses are clean and white and fresh. And there’s no smoke or smog. In its own way, this is a hopeful ending to a chapter that had a lot of dark and complicated imagery. We’re out of the relatively stagnant water of the marshes. Things are looking clean and white and fresh.
A few questions from this section of the book
Do you find that there isn’t enough time to talk? Does the noise and business of running your own cycle prevent dialogue?
How much time do you think that you have lost to meaningless technology-fueled commotion?
Do you think that suspicion and paranoia are inescapable features of contemporary society?
To what extent do you take personal responsibility for the maintenance of the motorcycle that is your self?
What motorbike would make a great contemporary homage to the original Zen-bikes?
The main skill is to keep from getting lost. Since the roads are used only by local people who know them by sight nobody complains if the junctions aren’t posted. And often they aren’t. When they are it’s usually a small sign hiding unobtrusively in the weeds and that’s all. Country road-sign makers seldom tell you twice. If you miss that sign in the weeds that’s your problem, not theirs. – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Chapter One
I’d like to begin by commenting that my Footnotes to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Essays are probably best appreciated by those who’ve read the book once or twice already. Clearly, some prior familiarity with the text will make my comments and observations more readily accessible But I am going to try to take an approach that will render the analysis of value or interest even if you haven’t or don’t intend to read the book. Or for that matter, even to those who may not actually be particularly interested in either zen or motorcycles. Though I suspect relatively few people who may take time to listen to these ramblings will fit that description.
As you may have noticed, this episode is titled “Footnotes to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part Three” and is part of an as-yet indeterminate series of explorations of this book. If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to listen to the earlier parts, you may wish to go back before proceeding on to the things I have to say here. Backtracking like that isn’t in any way obligatory, but there may be some comments and insights from that earlier analysis that may be helpful in this ongoing study.
Otherwise, I hope you’ll stay with me for a ride into the ideas, values and aesthetics this book has to offer.
The first chapter of Robert Pirsig’s ZAMM is perhaps the most approachable in a book that can be a rather off-putting and alienating read. For that reason and also since I think its important to point-out how densely-packed the book is right from its beginning, I’m going to take a slow ride through the first chapter. I’ll be exploring and considering the many insights and layered meanings or messages that may be found along the way.
What I’m going to do in this third part of the series is proceed from the narrator’s observation of the duck hunting sloughs that he and his riding companions are passing on their Motorcycles. I’ll continue for the next several pages of the first chapter. In my editions of the book, that’s roughly pages four through six of the white-covered Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition or pages twelve through fourteen of the green-covered edition. You may find photos of both editions on www.zensylvania.com or simply follow-along in whatever version you happen to have.
I’m going to overlap my current reading with a segment that was discussed in the previous part of this series since I think this provides some valuable insight into the author’s style, particularly in the pacing used when shifting topics or perspectives from one paragraph to the next.
These paragraphs involved in this current reading contain several observations and passages that are very near and dear to the aesthetically-oriented hearts and imaginations of motorcycle riders. In part two of this footnotes series, I commented that observations of temperature and weather play a significant role in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I also said that this was a particular consideration for motorcycle riders compared to car drivers and that even the worst or most extreme weather conditions are not directly experienced inside a protective climate controlled cabin. But a motorcycle rider always experiences weather and is therefore far more aware of and sensitive to it. I would be surprised if any motorcycle-riding fans of the book weren’t immediately reminded of the first paragraph:
“You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.”
I have driven just about every form of road-going vehicle that a person can drive: car, convertible, SUV, hatchback, sedan, pickup truck, van, cargo van, even 18-wheeler tractor trailer and yes, motorcycle. This observation, that sitting in the compartment of a car is comparable to watching TV is relatively true when compared to riding a motorcycle.
A car’s cabin is, primarily, a place of comfort, convenience and protection. The earliest road-going vehicles began as open carriages not very different from a horse-and-buggy carriage. As time past, a protective bubble grew around passengers -one that increasingly protected, comforted and separated them from the road. Currently that protective bubble has grown a vast and complicated array of technologies and systems that have done nothing other than to fulfill Pirsig’s claim. Not only do we have windscreens and roofs to keep weather out, heating and air-conditioning to control the temperature and cabin-air filters to keep the air we breathe free of the character of the air outside the vehicle….we also have seat belts, gps systems, cameras and sensors to help navigation; satellite and cellular telephone/communication systems to communicate around the planet, but most new vehicles now include small television screens which include significant entertainment…and self-driving vehicles. Now we don’t even need to watch the TV outside the car’s windscreen, we have one or more than one inside the car.
If a motorcycle is a metaphor for the self, the weather a metaphor for the events and times of or lives, the road a metaphor for the way we choose to live and riding the act of living….riding in a protective bubble where we are isolated from the weather and mostly ignorant of the road may well be one of the most apt metaphors of all. Just as our vehicles are becoming faster and more isolated….so, it sometimes seems, are our lives moving along faster and more isolated from living. Life seems to have become “just more TV.
Riding a motorcycle is never “just more TV”.
For a contemporary reader of Zen and the Art – that is to say, someone reading the book in this 2020’s, the narrator’s reference to the world moving by boringly in a frame has a special connotation which I’m not entirely certain was fully mature at the time of the book’s publication in 1974. Almost certainly, it was nowhere near as common as it is today.
While I think that I’ve made clear that I’m not an expert in anything at all, I think I have enough generalist ability to describe what framing is about. So here it goes. In the social sciences this idea of framing is a set of theories and perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies organize, perceive, and communicate about reality. It basically states that a frame can be put around a topic, issue or event which sets the context and guides the perceptions of a viewer. In other words, it is a tool of rhetoric. Well given Pirsig’s interest in rhetoric, the inclusion of that descriptive word in this particular observation is wonderfully meaningful. The fact that the narrator describes things going by boringly in a frame is, perhaps something we all need to consider more deeply. It is just possible that anything that goes by within a frame, however novel it may be at first, will ultimately be un-engaging and boring. It is also just possible that frames are, by nature of their design, contrary to everything that we actually need and aspire to.
This reference to frames may readily be reviewed, or meditated upon if you prefer that language, in context of Zen. Framing is a kind of dualism. Framing is necessarily oriented to a subject-object relationship among things. That orientation is, perhaps, fundamentally flawed and problematic. For my own part, I’ve done just that meditating or reflecting upon what I see as a problem that arises from rhetorical framing of things and found that framing separates me from my direct experience of things. In my experience, framing tends to be an arbitrary and external imposition of values – usually, but not always, someone else’s values based on their priorities. What I’m saying is that framing usually gets in the way of direct living and I usually object to it for that reason.
A Motorcycle Frame: It’s almost wholly irrelevant to the points in this article, but I’m not above the pun.
The narrator features the issue of framing when he goes on in the subsequent paragraph. It is a paragraph that is so direct and complete that it is tempting to simply conclude that there isn’t anything more to be said. But I think it is necessary to point out how continuous, how much momentum or forward progress there is in the writing. Each paragraph picks up from it’s predecessor to take the reader further down the conceptual roads they travel.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
The paragraph is almost as concrete as the concrete it mentions. The events of our lives seem always to be whizzing by. In part two, I argued that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle begins in media res as a way to emphasize that we are always right there living in the middle of or lives. Usually, we’re so caught up in the thick of things that we don’t recognize this fact. But every now and then, it does catch up to us. All of the hustle and activity that led up to that moment and all of the hustle and activity that we are yet to experience is all around and we’ve been dropped into the middle of it. Those moments aren’t really different or separate from the rest of our lives except for our recognition that we are always in the middle of things. Perhaps we may even find that living that present moment, living all of our present moments, rather than being caught up and swept away by the distraction of daily events, that this is what we need to focus on. It seems to me the narrator is saying something similar when he says ,
Image Courtesy of youngchoppers.com
That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
Next in our selected passage we come upon some of the explanation of the motorcycle-journey in the first three sentences of the next paragraph. We’re told that…
Chris and I are travelling to Montana with some friends riding up ahead, and maybe headed farther than that. Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. We are just vacationing.
These sentences tell us where the riders are going and that there are some other companions along for a part of the ride. These sentences let us know that the ride is intended to be relaxed and care-free…there’s no definite schedule or itinerary. The riders are “just vacationing.”
This phrase, “just vacationing” is ironic. Later in the book, the narrator recounts a person’s struggle to develop a definition for the word “quality”. You can find the passage I’m referring to in Chapter 19. The person struggled with the difference in meaning between “Quality is just what you like” and “Quality is what you like” concluding that inclusion of the word “just” is a pejorative. While we can leave exploration of the concerns to Chapter 19, I wanted to draw attention to the use of “just” in this early sentence. “We are just vacationing.”, in context of that later concern over the word “just”….is precisely the same.
Image Courtesy of directasia.com
For those of us who must recognize a differentiation of our time between when we are “vacationing” and when we are not, it seems to me that the vacationing time is more highly prized and valued. So using a pejorative “We are just vacationing.” Is completely wrong. We’re not making plans, we’re just vacationing….viewed from a certain angle, diminishes the importance of the time and of the approach. But it is important that he wrote it that way…if had a written “We are vacationing. Because we value our vacation time so much, we are avoiding detailed schedules and itineraries because that is the only way we can properly relax and live each moment…” it would have more directly explained the value. But the way it was phrased is, indeed often the way we view our vacations and relaxation…it’s unimportant time…time not demanded of others and therefore, shamefacedly describe our most valued commodities as something less than they are.
The paragraph then continues….
Secondary roads are preferred. Paved country roads are the best, state highways are next. Freeways are worst. We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes. Twisting hilly roads are long in terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you bank into turns and don’t get swung from side to side in any compartment. Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards are better, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer than you want rather than short, where people ask where you’re from and how long you’ve been riding.
When the narrator emphasizes that the riders’ focus is on good, rather than time…we immediately recognize the vacation mindset where one is focussed on enjoyment and satisfaction of the miles that they’re travelling rather than in racking up large numbers of miles.
Of course, these comments should also be taken as a statement of intent relative to reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – a book whose subtitle is An Inquiry into Values. The emphasis of the book should be one exploring the good rather than the plot that unfolds. It can be taken as a kind of statement that you shouldn’t be entering ZAMM for the story. Honestly, there isn’t all that much story to keep track of.
The depiction of the types of roads is a symbolic expression of the different paths in life that a person may choose to take. What is a billboard – it is the intrusion of some other entity’s priorities into the landscape of one’s life.
What is a porch – well the stoics take their name from a painted porch but that is probably a fortunate, though not meaningless coincidence. Porches are areas where people rest and for most people, probably come closest to a state of meditation. It is a place where people just sit.
The passage that follows establishes a relationship to the kind of road, both metaphorical and literal…..
It was some years ago that my wife and I and our friends first began to catch on to these roads. We took them once in a while for variety or for a shortcut to another main highway, and each time the scenery was grand and we left the road with a feeling of relaxation and enjoyment. We did this time after time before realizing what should have been obvious, these roads are truly different from the main ones. The whole pace of life and personality of the people who live along them are different. They’re not going anywhere. They’re not too busy to be courteous. The hereness and nowness of things is something they know all about. It’s the others, the ones who moved to the cities years ago and their lost offspring, who have all but forgotten it. The discovery was a real find.
This passage contains a sentence that contributes to the sense of irony or amusement that some modern readers approach the book…”The hereness and nowness of things is something they all know al about.”. Expressed as it is, the sentence does seem like something from the groovy seventies. Clearly the sentence could have been written differently….such as “The immediacy of things is something they know all about.” Or “The immediacy of things is something they fully understand.” While such a rendering may strike a contemporary reader as more serious….it also doesn’t separate and identity the time and space elements. When you try, it’s not all that easy to put the sentiments a different way without losing something.
It also contains a very difficult sentence being “. It’s the others, the ones who moved to the cities years ago and their lost offspring, who have all but forgotten it.” It should be understood that the narrator can only include himself and his family as being part of the ones who moved to the cities…after all, they only discovered these alternatives and explore them as tourists. So his own children are among the “lost offspring.” This reference, as close as it is t the limited narrative of the book shouldn’t be overlooked as the narrator (and Pirsig) seems to be saying something about the character of Chris in the book but more broadly about anyone born into contemporary society. In a sense anyone growing up in contemporary urban settings – the ways of life that are available – are lost children.
What is a “lost child”…well so far Pirsig has only stated that lost children have all but forgotten the hereness and nowness of things.
It is a big statement and as such, should be recognized as a kind of sign-post which requires the reader to look around and see what is coming.
I’ve wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn’t see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling.
The narrator demonstrates what being a lost child means. It means not catching on…not seeing things…being trained not to see things….being trained to believe the metropolitan (in our own age, the digital) is the real thing and reality is a boring hinterland.
And Pirsig provides one of his most often repeated observations and one that many readers have great affection for, “The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth.” And so it goes away.
Image Courtesy of motorcyclehabit.com
These observations seem to be more and more true with the advent and proliferation of digital technologies on the one hand and biological technologies on the other which seem to be “real action”….while the reality of living in the actual moment, of sitting on the porch, are boring hinterland.
In the next passage, Pirsig emphasizes that he and his family visit the better part of life..when they can…and for most of us this is reality. We visit alternate paths on a part time basis. As non-experts…because that’s what we can do…or all that we are willing to do. On the Zensylvania podcast, I’ve said that I’m a non-expert….I’ve never really found it in myself to be a specialist..putting all my time into motorcycles, philosophy, zen, meditation, tai chi or what have you. I go to these things as often as I can, though…
But once we caught on, of course, nothing could keep us off these roads, weekends, evenings, vacations. We have become real secondary-road motorcycle buffs and found there are things you learn as you go.
We have learned how to spot the good ones on a map, for example. If the line wiggles, that’s good. That means hills. If it appears to be the main route from a town to a city, that’s bad. The best ones always connect nowhere with nowhere and have an alternate that gets you there quicker. If you are going northeast from a large town you never go straight out of town for any long distance. You go out and then start jogging north, then east, then north again, and soon you are on a secondary route that only the local people use.
Connect nowhere to nowhere is a valuable repetition of his earlier “a kind of nowhere famous for nothing at all..” which we examined in part two of this series; it’s a recommendation of conceptual hinterlands as the valuable areas.
Secondary routes that only the local people use can be considered to be the esoteric practices of particular communities of thought and doctrine…maybe it’s a particular kind of rite or methodology….it’s a particular way of living and navigating certain kinds of life.
The next passage is an explanation that if a person follows some ideological, philosophical roads, they do in fact lead to empty fields with nothing and nobody in them….but contains an important idea for the book….
The main skill is to keep from getting lost. Since the roads are used only by local people who know them by sight nobody complains if the junctions aren’t posted. And often they aren’t. When they are it’s usually a small sign hiding unobtrusively in the weeds and that’s all. Country road-sign makers seldom tell you twice. If you miss that sign in the weeds that’s your problem, not theirs. Moreover, you discover that the highway maps are often inaccurate about country roads. And from time to time you find your “country road’ takes you onto a two-rutter and then a single rutter and then into a pasture and stops, or else it take you into some farmer’s backyard.
The narrator’s comment that county-road sign makers seldom tell you twice should be taken as a caution about reading the book. Pirsig is the country-road signmaker. He isn’t often going to tell you twice when to look for a crossing in the road. You, the reader, need to be paying attention unless you’re already familiar with the territory. Pirsig is telling you that if you don’t “get it”, that’s you’re problem and not his.
Whether it’s Zen, rhetoric, his metaphysics of quality or what have you…it’s up to you to navigate.
Highway maps are often inaccurate…harkens to the author’s note where Pirsig talks about the book providing little in the way of motorcycle maintenance and not being authoritative about Zen either….it’s a bit of fun. An extension of the koan….the book is inaccurate and in some places may lead to a pasture…..where there is famously little to be found other than cow manure.
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.
Dead reckoning is an interesting thing…it’s “the process of calculating one’s position, especially at sea, by estimating the direction and distance traveled rather than by using landmarks, astronomical observations, or electronic navigation methods.
It’s the ability to know where you are and where things are based on that and that alone….some people do not have any dead reckoning at all.
A compass…is a powerful metaphor but doesn’t actually get used in the book…
Having America to ourselves is a statement of freedom…….it’s a sentiment whose value can be readily felt during the pandemic lockdown of 2020 and 2021…there are times and places when the sentiment was very much absent.
As a person…do you feel that you have autonomy to go into the world and be who you want to be…to know where you are and have the freedom to get there from here?
The final passage is a a contrast from dead reckoning your way into life and what most people do…they are stuck on the highway and unable to proceeed…
In the final passage that we’re going to look at, the narrator talks about long weekends…a time when lots of people get on the highway with a focus on time rather than good…they want to get away (and back) but ultimately they can’t. They’re stuck not enjoying the here and now because they aren’t willing to get off the main ideological roads….and spend time in the nowhere. They want to be somewhere.
On Labour Day and Memorial Day weekends we travel for miles on these roads without seeing another vehicle, then cross a federal highway and look at cars strung bumper to bumper to the horizon. Scowling faces inside. Kids crying in the back seat. I keep wishing there were some way to tell them something but they scowl and appear to be in a hurry, and there isn’t….
There isn’t because the people in the cars are “lost children” who are stuck on a highspeed highway that isn’t going anywhere….and that is an incredibly powerful metaphor and explanation.
It’s not a particularly hopeful way to end this Zensylvania exploration but it may be an important one…because the answers to some questions might be deeply, fundamentally important to what you do next.
Is much of your life…just more tv?
Are there significant portions of your life where the frame is gone?
Are you focused on good or are you focused on the time?
Do you tell truth to go away when it knocks on the door?
Is the course of contemporary society producing lost children?
Do you think you are a lost child?
Do you have the ability and the courage to dead reckon a way forward?
Image Courtesy of markrichardson.ca – if you haven’t read Zen and Now: On the Trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you may want to.
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on “good” rather than “time”….and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes. – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Chapter 1
Original Essay
See Also
References & Notes
External Links
Original Essay
I’d like to begin by commenting that my Footnotes to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance essays are probably best appreciated by those who’ve read the book once or twice already. Clearly, some prior familiarity with the text will make my comments and observations more readily accessible. But I am going to try to take an approach that will render the analysis of value or interest even if you haven’t or don’t intend to read the book. Or for that matter, even to those who may not actually be particularly interested in either Zen or motorcycles. Though I suspect relatively few people who may take time to listen to these ramblings will fit that description.
As you may have noticed, this episode is titled “Footnotes to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part Two” and is the second installment in an as-yet indeterminate series of explorations of this book. If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to listen to Part One, you may wish to go back to that episode, wherein I consider the book’s Title and the Author’s Note, before proceeding on to the things I have to say here. Backtracking like that isn’t in any way obligatory, but there may be some comments and insights from that earlier analysis that may be helpful in this ongoing study.
Otherwise, I hope you’ll stay with me for a ride into the ideas, values and aesthetics this book has to offer.
The first chapter of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM or sometimes Zen and the Art) is perhaps the most approachable in a book that can be a rather off-putting and alienating read. For that reason and also since I think its important to point-out how densely-packed the book is right from its beginning, I’m going to take a slow ride through the first chapter. I’ll be exploring and considering the many insights and layered meanings or messages that may be found along the way.
Photo Courtesy Goodreads
So let’s start with a brief reading of the first few paragraphs of chapter one. I have two copies of the book that I work from. There’s my very marked-up William Morrow Paperbacks Edition published in 2005 (ISBN 9780060839871). You can see a photo of this edition at left. I purchased my copy in 2016 with the specific purpose of having a copy that I would be able to mark up with pens and highlighters. I rarely mark books up this way, but wanted the freedom to dig into the text but still have my earlier copy left undamaged.
I purchased my Harper Perennial Modern Classics Edition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ISBN 9780061908033) in February or March of 2014 but it was published in 2008. The font is a little larger and my copy remains in excellent condition. I use this copy for readings on the podcast. There’s a photo of this edition below right.
As the page numbering for the two editions is different, I have to assume that page numbering for all editions will vary slightly. For This essay, I’ve selected a relatively brief passage from the beginning of Chapter One through to the paragraph that ends with the narrator’s observation that the marsh is at it’s “alivest”.
Photo Courtesy of Goodreads
As a starter to exploration of the chapter and to the story conveyed by the text, I want to suggest that this beginning is just as significant as any beginning you’re likely to encounter in literature. In my opinion it ranks with Leo Tolstoy’s opener to Anna Karenina “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Or with Charles Dickens’ opening to A Tale of Two Cities : “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity….”
What I’m saying is that, like these other masterpieces of literature, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance opens memorably and immediately upon key themes that are explored throughout the text. The opening paragraphs should not, and indeed cannot, be considered as throw-away lines. They immediately put you on a motorcycle and on the specific journey that Pirsig has designed.
In literature this opening is called “in media res” or in the middle of things. With your first approach of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the characters have already begun their day’s riding. The action is happening. All of the explanations, the Chautauquas ( these are Pirsig’s versions of meditations or lectures). The reason(s) for the trip. The preparations. The life that led to the trip. We must wait for all of these things to be revealed. We start with riding.
This placement of the riding immediately before the reader is an assertion of riding as the primary concern. Why is that important? For starters, the book’s cover promises that the book will, in some way, be about motorcycles. There isn’t a more sure way to deliver on that promise than to have the books’ first sentence moving sixty miles per hour on a bike. That’s an immediate connection. Within the context of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a motorcycle is a metaphor for the self. Pirsig made this clear in a later passage that states, “The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself.”
With a motorcycle as the metaphor of the self – riding, clearly is the metaphor for the self living life.
I can’t help but mention that I am inevitably reminded of “Homeless” Kodo Sawaki’s rather dense and strangely worded explanation of zen meditation as being “the self selfing the self”. To be frank, Sawaki’s comment is not particularly helpful to the unprepared. How exactly is a person supposed to be enlightened by a comment like that. As a contrast, Pirsig’s use of motorcycle-based metaphorical language is so much more poetic and relatable. Pirsig’s approach is to give the reader a hands-on-grips metaphor through which it is just possible to catch glimpse of Kodo Sawaki in your peripheral vision, so to speak
The idea of motorcycle-as-self and riding-as-living ought to remind even non-riders of the motto “Live to Ride, Ride to Live” often associated with “bikers” – particularly Harley Davidson, cruiser style, bikers. This sense that living and riding go together….that they are metaphors for each other. There is a synthesis here. So next time you see that catch-phrase emblazoned across a bumper sticker, t-shirt or some such thing, you may want to consider whether the motto may be more than just a blustery declaration of someone’s favorite recreational pastime. Maybe it’s a deeply-considered existential insight.
Photo Courtesy of Flickr
Let’s say, however, that motorcyles aren’t your thing – that they don’t inspire any kind of eagerness or excitement. Well that’s ok because the specific metaphor isn’t the key consideration….it is, in a manner of speaking, only the finger pointing at the moon….if you prefer a different metaphor….whether that is gardening, horseback riding, swimming, a martial art, or something altogether different…well go ahead and substitute that metaphor while recognizing that the metaphor is there to reveal truths about yourself and living in your world.
This in media res introduction to the chapter, like those by Tolstoy and Dickens that I already referenced are a kind of summary of the book’s ideological and aesthetic principles: that is, that living life is the primary consideration.
Even though we’ve only just cracked the first moments of the book, I want to, metaphorically speaking, halt our progress through Zen and the Art and observe that “in media res” is exactly where we find ourselves at every moment in our lives. Usually, we’ve been so caught up in the thick of things that we don’t recognize this fact. But every now and then, it does catch up to us. Maybe during the commute to work or to complete some errand; maybe while sitting on the porch or patio, a moment or two of clarity arrives and we recognize that all of the hustle and activity that led up to that moment and all of the hustle and activity that we are yet to experience is all around and we’ve been dropped into the middle of it. Those moments aren’t really different or separate from the rest of our lives except for our recognition that we are always in the middle of things. Perhaps we may even find that living that present moment, living all of our present moments, rather than being caught up and swept away by the distraction of daily events, that this is what we need to focus on.
That is riding a motorcycle. Or, for those who may prefer a different metaphor for living and being – that is your self simply living. As Sawaki would have it the self selfing the self.
Robert and Chris Pirsig – Do you think you could read your watch at sixty miles per hour?
In the first paragraph of the book, beyond dropping the reader right into the synthesis of riding and living….Pirsig has also launched a theme that will be explored later in the book. And this is an exploration of truth and rhetoric. If you have a look at the chapter’s first sentence again, the narrator says “I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight thirty in the morning.” If this does not yet seem to be an exploration of truth and rhetoric, let’s examine the situation further. While the book never explicitly states that the narrator is Robert Pirsig, most readers consider this to be the case. If that is so, then most readers also consider the motorcycle that the narrator is riding to be Pirsig’s Honda CB77 Superhawk. There’s a photograph readily available on the internet showing Pirsig and his son, Chris, sitting on the bike. Chris is showing what seems to be a fairly good-natured smile to the camera while Pirsig has his hands on the motorcycles grips, seemingly ready to head off on the dirt road in the background. Then there’s another publicity photo of Pirsig in an improbable pose leaning over the back of the bike with a wrench held to the tail-light, one foot on a chair or stool, glasses sliding down his nose and a watch poking slightly from his sleeve. In considering the two photos, it seems extremely improbable to me that anyone could see the time of their watch without taking their hand from the grip. And almost certainly not at the secondary highway speeds (sixty miles per hour) the narrator would have been riding…even if he was only wearing a long-sleeved shirt rather than a protective leather jacket of the day.
Robert Pirsig – Wrenching on the Rhetoric
The statement can’t be taken as very probable. It is a rhetorical statement and a rhetorical truth.
Later in the book, Pirsig makes clear that he places great value in rhetoric and the sophists that Plato, Aristotle and any number of other philosophers did not respect. So this deployment of a rhetorical statement sets up practical consistency with his later assertions in support of rhetorical techniques and perspectives. And that is a consideration that a reader of Zen and the Art should return to frequently while reading.
Clearly, it is entirely possible to read the rest of the chapter and book without giving consideration to whether that first sentence is likely to be factually correct or not. On face value, all the narrator has indicated is that they’re on a morning ride. It’s a setting of the scene. Taken as something more than scene setting, however, there’s a priority on the sentence’s implications more than on its verifiable content. What is important is that the rider and the reader both observe that this is in fact a morning ride (living a life, as we’ve already established) at a particular time. Whenever Pirsig sets out some particular fact for notice, it is the reader’s job to investigate what precisely he may be gesturing to.
The time, 8:30 is close-upon a Catholic Canonical Time – 9am. This is the Terce, or third hour which establishes “a brief respite from the day’s activities. It’s recognized as a time for prayer. Nine a.m. is associated with the descent of the Christian “Holy Spirit” upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost…therefore it isa time when invocation of that “Holy Spirit” for strength in dealing with the conflicts of the day is most appropriate.
By selection of 8:30 am, Pirsig is indicating a kind of rhetorical invocation. The subtlety of this invocation is wonderful. But I don’t want to suggest that Pirsig was taking a Catholic nor necessarily even a Christian position in the book. Instead, I feel certain that Pirsig merely opened the ability to discuss certain theological concepts. Pirsig is suggesting that a holy spirit is due to be visited. So Pirsig has also begun to unveil some exploration of spiritualism, religion and particularly of messianic presence.
Invocation of the gods and muses for assistance is, of course, an ancient tradition within epic poetry. What comes to mind for me are works such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost. In epic poetry, the hero of the epic must undergo a literal or metaphorical trip through hell. The narrator’s journey can therefore be contemplated in comparison to the journeys of other epic heroes.
It may seem as though I’m making more of that first sentence than Pirsig may have intended. But I really don’t think so. In Pirsig’s second book, Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, Pirsig describes a bizarre and exhaustive writing process whereby every sentence and statement of a final work is individually documented and filed in a kind of card system – then sorted in and out of the whole text in relation to other statements and sentences. It is a kind of truth process. Given that Pirsig wrote Zen and the Art before word-processors were available, it seems unlikely that this process was actually used in the writing…but it does give a perspective on the scrutiny that Pirsig is willing to have his writing undergo. Based on all of this I think it is fair to argue that the first sentence of Zen and the art:
Is intended to fulfill the book’s title’s promise that motorycles -literal and metaphorical are the central concern;
Is itself a rhetorical rather than a factual sentence;
Is intended to support Pirsig’s later arguments on behalf of rhetoric;
Is a subtle invocation of divine support of this venture – in the spirit of the epic poetry and Catholic canonical tradition;
Is a foreshadowing of exploration of messianic religion – and a promise of visitation within the book of a divine spirit; and,
Is intended to present an in media res perspective on living life – a perspective that is not inconsistent with zen philosophy that is also promised on the book’s cover.
In the second half of the opening paragraph of the chapter, the narrator says, “The wind, even at sixty miles an hour, is warm and humid. When it’s this hot and muggy at eight-thirty, I’m wondering what is going to be like in the afternoon.”
This description brings forward an ongoing concern with temperature and weather that occurs throughout the story. Certainly for a motorcycle rider, these are significant matters that a car driver (for example) doesn’t usually need to give much attention to. Even the worst or most extreme weather conditions are not directly experienced inside a protective climate controlled cabin. But a motorcycle rider always experiences weather and is therefore far more aware of and sensitive to it.
As an extension of the metaphors…motorcycle as the self; riding as living….weather is the events and times within which we live. Pirsig is asking if the beginning of an uncomfortable warmth are present so early in the ride, how unpleasant, how difficult will the times be later. If living is difficult now, what about later when we may expect things to be even more so? Pirsig and the narrator are amplifying just how in media res the opening is. Things are already “hot”.
At eight thirty – this time when we have respite and grace…what about when that respite and grace is gone? There is a potential for reverence here that one may not expect or even be looking for. This potential reverence is present throughout the book.
Pirsig’s use of the term “Sixty miles per hour” is another phrase were different thing are being communicated simultaneously. Sixty miles an hour is another way to say – a mile a minute. It is an old phrase for someone talking or thinking fast. That they have a lot going on.
In 1974 the American federal government passed a law which set the National Maximum Speed Limit at 55 mph in response to the 1973 oil crisis…ZAMM was published in 1974. While it may be a coincidence, it isn’t a meaningless one. Within the story, Pirsig’s narrator is already exceeding the speed limit and has a lot going on – arguably overwhelmingly too much.
Following that initial invocation passage, we have a bit more scene-setting.
“In the wind are pungent odors from the marshes by the road. We are in an area of the Central Plains filled with thousands of duck-hunting sloughs, heading northwest from Minneapolis toward the Dakotas. This highway is an old concrete two-laner that hasn’t had much traffic since a four-laner went in parallel to it several years ago. When we pass a marsh the air suddenly becomes cooler. Then, when we are past, it suddenly warms up again.”
Certainly an initial preoccupation with temperature is emphasized but there is also this rather odd reference to duck-hunting sloughs.
So what’s up with ducks? Well there’s a whole lot to be navigated when it comes to ducks. Do a bit of searching and you’ll find that the duck has a variety of symbolic meanings in different cultures. It can symbolize clarity, family, love, vigilance, intuition, nurturing, protection, emotioin, self-expression, balance, adaptation, grace, and strength. Duck symbolism is closely connected to water symbolism, which is about mystery, magic, and inspiration.
In China, the mandarin duck symbolizes love
In Christianity,…The way a duck preens itself to become waterproof is linked to anointing in Christianity, a symbol of blessing, protection, and enlightenment.
Then there’s the extension of that waterproofing – water off a duck’s back or not letting things bother you.
In Greek mythology Penelope is a character in Homer’s Odyssey known for her loyalty to Odysseus. The name Penelope contains the root for a particular species of duck. Penelope avoided marrying other suitors during Odysseus’ absence.
With all of this potential symbolism that Pirsig has drawn upon, it’s no small task to consider what he might have been driving at. Significantly, it is important to point out that, regardless of which specific symbol he may be playing with or if indeed the whole collection of meanings has been targeted, the ducks are subject to hunting. From an ideological point of view, Pirsig has established that symbols and meanings are targets.
The duck hunting image recurs a few paragraphs later and then again in the next-to-final chapter when the narrator confronts his young son and makes a mental comparison to snapping the neck of a duck that he had shot but not killed during a hunting trip. It is a rather ugly and problematic scene
.
Since Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is also a book of Zen, let’s consider how ducks may be an important part of teaching that tradition.
Following is the koan, Master Ma’s Wild Duck. There are a variety of versions of this story available online. Master Ma refers to Mazu Daoyi who was an influential Chan Buddhism teacher during the Tan Dynasty of China. He lived 709-788. Master Ma’s teaching style of “strange words and extraordinary actions” are a kind of paradigm and staple of Zen teaching.
Once, when Great Master Ma and Pai Chang were walking together, they saw some wild ducks fly by. The Great Master asked, “What is that?” Chang said, “Wild ducks.” The Great Master said, “Where have they gone?” Chang said, “They’ve flown away.” The Great Master then twisted Pai Chang’s nose. Chang cried out in pain. The Great Master said, “When have they ever flown away?”
Now a koan is brief story that is intended to teach a zen lesson. Based on this story, Master Ma’s teaching style seems to be more abusive than instructive. In Zen the idea is that the abuse is intended to awaken a student from their ignorance. And perhaps that is what Pirsig intends by juxtaposing the uncomprehending look in a duck’s eyes just before its neck is snapped with the uncomprehending look in his eleven year old son’s eyes when confronted with the idea that both he and his father are, clinically speaking mentally incompetent.
Wellin zen, a koan is intended to be a story or value that the zen practitioner is to become one with rather than intellectualize. If inhabiting the values of a story are intended, then Pirsig’s story of shocking his son into enlightenment of his true nature is consistent with a paradigm of zen teaching.
Even if these connotations are correct, we again must recall that Pirsig’s reference is to hunting ducks and it seems equally likely that he’s hunting this zen teaching paradigm as much as any of the other symbols, traditions or ideologies in the book.
So we’ve arrived at the third paragraph of the first chapter of Zen and the Art. If you’re still with me, I’m grateful that you’re been patient with what I promised was going to be a slow ride. Soon, things are going to move along a little more quickly…though perhaps not a mile a minute.
“I’m happy to be riding back into this country. It is a kind of nowhere, famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that. Tensions disappear along old roads like this. We bump along the beat up concrete between the cattails and stretches of meadow and then more cattails and marsh grass. Here and there is a stretch of open water and if you look closely you can see wild ducks at the edge of the cattails. And turtles…There’s a red-winged blackbird.”
Ushiku Marsh by Kawase Hasui
I think this passage is particularly attractive. It reads like a traditional Japanese painting with the simple images of cattails and marsh grass…it is also a fairly direct comparison of meditation with the “nowhere famous for nothing”. The road is literally and metaphorically an old path…not the newer one that had been built and presumably goes, very nearly to similar destinations.
A very significant theme of Zen and the Art is coping with modern society, the paths – these two and four lane roads that our travellers have access to and choice between can be thought-of as different modes of life that we may choose. Cycle is self, riding is living, weather are events and conditions of our lives and the path is the way we choose to reach our destination. Clearly by contrasting a new 4-lane highway that the riders are not actually on (but that we may all readily imagine) with this older highway that is a kind of nowhere, famous for nothing at all is a symbolic contrast of these different paths or values.
Most two lane highways area actually a single unified road while modern 4-lane highways are often two roads separated by a median. It’s another double-meaning image where the single-lane highway represents the monism of zen while the four-laner represents dualistic approaches.
Pirsig reinforces the duck imagery but also invokes turtles…establishing a connection to the spirituality of native north American cultures…and then there is a strange emphasis of seeing a blackbird. The paragraph is, of course, a long form haiku…where the cut line occurs between turtles and the mention of the blackbird.
Why blackbird? Again, with a wide variety of cultures to draw upon, the Blackbird may be viewed as a messenger of good or bad news. It is sent to bring a message that one is to learn from.
The narrator then “whacks” his son’s knee to bring his attention to the blackbird and his son lets him know he’s already seen blackbirds….we then come to the the unsettling passage where the narrator recalls duck hunting
“You have to get older for that. For me this is all mixed with memories that he doesn’t have. Cold mornings long ago when the marsh grass had turned brown and cattails were waving in the northwest wind. The pungent smell then was from muck stirred-up by the hip boots while we were getting in position for the sun to come up and the duck season to open. Or winters when the sloughs were frozen over and dead and I could walk across the ice and snow between the dead cattails and seen nothing but grey skies and dead things and cold. The blackbirds were gone then. But now in July they’re back and everything is at its alivest and every foot of these sloughs is humming and cricking and buzzing and chirping, a whole community of millions of living things living our their lives in a kind of benign continuum.”
Pirsig’s use of language of this passage always reminds me of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner…a kind of epic in its own right – an impression that catches me frequently in the book. This connotation is another one of those situations that may not have been intended by Pirsig yet carries a variety of valuable parallels. Arguably, Pirsig’s narrator is not so very distant from the ancient mariner character in Coleridge’s poem – after all, he is a figure that hunted a bird he really ought to have left alone.
Perhaps unique to my study of Coleridge, the associations here also remind me of Coleridge’s collaboration with William Wordsworth on the 1798 book of poetry called Lyrical Ballads and thereby also to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and by long extension the old English poem title Beowulf. While I’m not gong to delve that now, I wanted to mention these works now as I expect to reference them in future evaluation of Zen and the Art.
Well we’ve only covered a few hundred words of a book that’s over 400 pages long…but I feel that it is important to travel some of these early passages slowly and with care. Not only is it interesting to identify and engage with the wide variety of potential meanings and sources that Pisig may have been gesturing to, it is valuable to consider how these themes may relate to any integrated world view that a person may consciously decide to embody during their lives.
Do we prefer to stick to some form of traditional two laner of something like Zen or do we go along with the four-laner? Do we hunt down the ideologies that guide our decisions and, metaphorically speaking, snap their necks or do we travel along without even knowing they’re there? Is living each moment our central concern or do we find ourselves overwhelmed by the in media res nature of living between our memories of the past and anticipations of the future?
Robert Pirsig was proud that his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a genuine attempt to create a new metaphysical philosophy. Whether that is completely accurate or not is certainly open for question, as is the question of whether the specific system he attempted to work out (the Metaphysics of Quality) is entirely reliable. I agree with Pirsig’s pride in attempting to work things out and in writing which provides such a wide range of possible sources and meanings to engage.
I think that the use of a motorcycle as a metaphor of the self was an inspired and effective choice. It is a metaphor that allows us to consider ourselves by considering the metaphor. I would be interested to hear your thoughts about the motorcycle as metaphor, about this introduction to Robert Pirsig’s book or any other matter that may have come to mind. For now, I can see by my watch, without lifting my fingers from the keyboard, that it’s six pm and its time to bring this installment of Zensylvania to a close.
See Also
Footnotes to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Part 1
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Several months after my forty-fourth birthday, I purchased a battered and abused 1982 Yamaha XJ Five-fifty Maxim. While I had previously owned and enjoyed many different cars and trucks, the Maxim was my first motorcycle. So far, it has been my only motorcycle. In part, I acquired the Maxim to fulfill a long-deferred curiosity and ambition. That being, of course, to learn how to ride a motorcycle. I was certainly aware that buying a motorcycle and learning how to ride it could be a significant event or feature of my life. After all, that’s why I was doing it. However, I really had no idea how much of a fundamental change and impact that the experience would have on my relationship to learning and my general approach to day to day life.
At the motorcycle garage and sometime dealer where I found the bike I would eventually buy, there was a small selection of used bikes to choose from. I had originally visited the shop with the intention to look-over a couple of early 1980’s era Honda Magna’s that had been advertised. Alongside the Magna’s however, I found a yellow seven hundred and fifty c.c. Maxim as well as the smaller five-fifty. In fact, the five-fifty was tucked away and not quite forgotten. I could probably have purchased any of the larger displacement bikes without regret. To be honest, the bigger motorcycles even appealed to an immature and egotistical impulse. But something about the five-fifty attracted me. Sitting on the bike felt comfortable and right. The Maxim’s teardrop-shaped fuel tank and side covers were black with purple flames stretching, in that classic hotrod style, toward the back of the bike. Despite such a styling cliché, the flames didn’t seem to take themselves too seriously. I mean really, purple? And the whole paintjob was what may be generously called “tired”. The flames had gone past cliché to quaint. At some point in the decades before I’d owned it, someone had also removed the original curvy chrome handle-bars that the bike had been sold with to a straight, black motocross-style bar. I could hardly have known what a good idea that had been when I bought the bike, but that handlebar set-up gave the bike its own personality and handling that helped to build my confidence as a rider. The bike’s original dual chrome exhaust pipes had also been replaced by a matte black four-into-one design. Inside the cement cinder block walls of the garage, revved to a few thousand r.p.m., the little four-cylinder sounded racy and entertaining. Inviting rather than intimidating. The gauges and instruments didn’t seem to be original to the bike either. Here was a motorcycle that was clearly past prime condition and into a second or third shot at life.
With thirty year-old patina. The purple flames that didn’t take themselves too seriously. The genuine exhaust note. Dropping eight hundred dollars in the middle of February in 2014 meant that the little four-cylinder motorcycle, and all of the possibilities it presented, was mine to be had. I wouldn’t be able to ride it for several months, but I was excited and satisfied to obtain what seemed to be an apt avatar and metaphor of my self.
More recently, as my fiftieth birthday came and went, I approached another long-deferred curiosity and ambition: beginning to learn the martial art called Tai Chi. It might be forgiven if someone were to argue that learning to practice Tai Chi seems rather less exhilarating and significantly less dangerous than learning to ride a motorcycle. After all, isn’t one of the archetypal images of Tai Chi that of grey-haired elders moving slowly, and probably in unison, in a park-like setting? But at fifty I had – and continue to have – expectations that learning Tai Chi would be every bit as enriching an experience as learning to ride a motorcycle had been.
In Zensylvania, it isn’t the riding of a motorcycle or the performance of a particular Tai Chi movement that we are necessarily concerned with. Those experiences are moments in time that can be enjoyed and remembered, for sure. But what we are more concerned with is our relationship to learning how to do these things in the first place. The creation of the state of mind where it is possible to learn a new skill or set of knowledge is itself an achievement that is worthy of consideration.
Aesthetically, learning to ride a motorcycle and learning Tai Chi may seem to be opposing activities which would appeal to very different types of people. Riding a motorcycle can be brazenly loud and smelly, not to mention physically demanding. Riding a motorcycle carries the ever-present threat of injury or death. Riding a motorcycle is potentially the fastest and riskiest iteration of yourself in motion that you can experience. Stop paying attention at the wrong moment and you could face the worst (or even the last) day of your life.
Meanwhile practicing Tai Chi seems to be the epitome of the quiet, the calm and the physically un-intimidating. The greatest danger faced by the person engaged in Tai Chi seems to be that of peacefulness and serenity. But there is a dark side. Tai Chi is potentially the slowest and most connected iteration of yourself in motion that you can experience. Stop paying attention at the wrong moment and you could be faced by your own lack of physical coordination, balance and self-understanding.
For me, these two very different activities appeal to a similar need. That is the need to be a genuine learner or novice with something. Despite the external and overt aesthetic differences, these two activities have some very considerable similarities when it comes to learning and re-setting my understanding of myself.
When I decided that I would finally learn to ride a motorcycle, I was already firmly established in middle age. While the objective to ride had been something I’d carried all the way back from my early-twenties, finally doing it was not some kind of stereo-typical mid-life crisis grab at youth. Nor was it a form of fantasy life-style wish-fulfillment. I had no interest in becoming a wild-life biker, speed-track rider or whatever may come to mind when some middle-aged man buys a new toy. In fact, the idea of riding a motorcycle had always been both attractive and intimidating for me. It had mostly seemed like something that other people did but that I probably wouldn’t. It was the kind of thing that would inspire the thought “Wouldn’t it be great to experience riding a motorcycle”. But that thought was usually followed by ” But that isn’t the kind of thing I’ll really actually do”.
At that time, my family and I were having a tough year. Several things had happened that seemed to be out of our control. Health issues. Career issues. Life issues. Things that I had taken for granted or that I felt that I had achieved – or that I felt were still achievable, had rather suddenly become uncertain. The details of those times are almost wholly irrelevant to the point that I want to make. Most people experience a version of the kind of crisis I’m talking about at some point in their lives. For some people the crisis they experience, the difficulties they encounter may be so enormous and shattering, that anything less dramatic might seem embarrassingly small in comparison. Setting comparisons aside, however, sooner or later life knocks us down.
Suddenly I was in shadows of fear, self-doubt and uncertainty. For me it was a time when when my confidence in myself and in the fundamental rightness of the world had been seriously dinged-up. There were parts of me that were emptied out as they hadn’t been in decades. I didn’t consciously know it at the time, but I needed to take something on that would help me re-build my integrated self from the ground up.
Perhaps through the force of an instinct that I wasn’t aware of, I did it. I tackled something that was almost wholly outside of my character and skill-set. I put myself in the position of a beginner and a learner. I can’t emphasize enough how important this point is. In Zen philosophy, there is a well-known expectation that a person should maintain a “beginner’s mind”. In Zen, there is the word “shoshin” which has this sense that a beginner approaches something without pre-conceptions. Shoshin indicates that the experience, the thing that the person has begun, is fresh, new and not already known. A person who is a beginner is a whole learner. Relative to the thing that is to be learned, the beginner has no status and no standing. Everything is still un-acquired.
But so much of the life, career and society I grew-up with and into had negated the value of a beginner’s mind. Building a career, a family, a home and a sense of self was, for me, the opposite of maintaining a beginner mindset. Building a career or a sense of self is exactly that – building. It’s an additive process. Experience upon experience. Year upon year. Becoming a specialist or an expert in a career of any kind is a process of amassing knowledge, skills, competence over time. You don’t “get ahead” in a career by being a beginner. And being ahead is, by practical application, no longer being a beginner. On the corporate ladder, beginners are at the bottom rung, not at the top.
Similarly having a home with a set of family traditions and memories means adding, day-to-day, night-to-night, year-over-year, occasion after occasion to everything that came before. Birthdays. Holidays. Weekdays. Weekends. Meals. All of the activities that a family encounters are built through a combination of familiarity, repetition and in some cases, improvement. I had spent decades becoming the person I was. I wanted to continue to be better – but my conceptions of better were additive rather than reductive. I wasn’t un-happy with myself. But I was facing situations where I really didn’t know how to continue building in the face of the experiences and difficulties I had recently had. Motorcycling came along as an opportunity to place value in being a ground-up beginner.
With motorcycling, I started with a two-hour long try-it-out course at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It was the kind of course for people who’ve never been on, or probably near, a motorcycle. People who’d ridden a dirt-bike as a kid, or maybe had a motorbike earlier in life didn’t take this kind of course. This was for genuine, full-on beginners. On the day that I took the course, there were about a dozen students of various ages, but we were all equal in our skill. Essentially none. We needed to show up with a helmet, gloves and other basic gear to allow basic, safety-oriented exposure to motorbikes. Beyond that, the instructors assumed we knew nothing about how to approach and operate a motorcycle. But there was no condescension by the instructors as regards our role as beginners nor was there any apparent assumptions about us as people. Unlike someone who may be starting a new career from scratch or re-building their home finances after a major set-back, the beginner motorcyclist isn’t necessarily faced with anxieties over those really big components of life.
Ironically, this absence of real or perceived social and economic consequences is exactly what makes this kind of activity valuable to developing and maintaining a beginner’s mind.
In that all-too-brief course, we learned where the various controls on the bike were and how they functioned. We learned how to operate the clutch and how to operate the gear selector. We learned about the brakes and where we should be looking while riding. And we started to learn how to put all of these things together while riding. By the end of two hours, the instructors let us putt around in first-gear on the college’s Honda Titan 150 bikes. Riding at less than ten kilometers per hour was one of the most eye-opening experiences of my adult life.
And for me, it was enough to lead to buying that five-fifty Maxim and to signing up for the weekend-long learner course that was designed to help turn beginners like me into competent (if not proficient) street-legal riders. I am not a risk-taking thrill-seeker at heart and was very confident that there was no point in jumping on any motorcycle without expert guidance to help keep my middle-aged skin and bones intact. By the end of the second training course, I had done something that I hadn’t done since I was a kid – I learned the basics of a completely new physical skill.
But I had done another thing that was probably more important to me. I had re-set my ability to be a full and true beginner. I sold the motorcycle after a couple of years. I’d ridden around my county frequently enough to feel confident on the bike but without ever feeling like an expert. I was able to ride. I could now look at a motorcycle and say, “wouldn’t it be nice to experience riding a motorbike” and the second thought was “I know what that’s like” rather than “but that’s not something I’d ever actually do.” Learning to ride was an exciting, dangerous and extremely enriching personal experience. After a couple of seasons exploring Elgin County’s farm-and-Carolinian-forest-lined roads, I sold the bike. At the time, I had other priorities and felt that my curiosity about motorcycles had been satisfied and the ambition fulfilled. I got out without sustaining any injuries and that seemed to be enough at the time.
Being a beginner can be exhilarating but the best thing about being a beginner is that it lets you build or re-build yourself from the ground-up.
The process of building a part of myself from the ground-up helped me to be willing and able to build other parts of myself from the ground-up. In areas of myself where there was more consequence. It enabled me to bring one career to and end that I was satisfied with. And to be prepared to build a new one from the ground-up. It isn’t easy to set aside a couple of decades of progress up one career ladder to start-over down at the bottom rung. I found that I wanted all that previously climbing to matter, to be counted. But that other climbing didn’t really matter all that much. Learning to ride a motorcycle. Learning to be a beginner helped to make the state of mind adjustments I needed to get on with the present.
More recently, the whole world has undergone dramatic and unprecedented changes that has made almost every aspect of our lives uncertain and overshadowed with fears. For many people, myself included, the pandemic brought changes to the pace and presentation of our daily lives. Before the pandemic came, I was working in a large corporate centre alongside hundreds of others. I went about my day-to-day business as a fifty-plus-year-old member of my community in my own way. I shopped for groceries or other goods and services when and how I preferred to. I obtained medical services when needed then – and, unfortunately, this was with increasing frequency. Most things were reasonably convenient.
For me and for everyone else, in March of 2020, however, the reliable and predictable parts of our lives suddenly weren’t.
Health issues. Career Issues. We all had to wear masks and curtail our usual habits of daily living. Living arrangements that had been working just fine suddenly needed to change. Many people lost their jobs, temporarily or permanently. I was extremely fortunate that the pandemic resulted in being newly-established as a home-based worker doing the same work I had already been doing. But that relative good luck didn’t mean that the world and my daily-life wasn’t suddenly very different, very stressful and requiring some different approaches to life. I still needed to do my best to be healthy and happily content in my daily life.
So I decided to tackle another long-standing ambition. I decided to begin learning Tai Chi.
Deciding to learn Tai Chi during the social distancing social and regulatory environment of 2020 and 2021 have meant that the only viable sources of expert guidance were to be found via the internet. And there’s no shortage of potential experts to choose from. Frankly, I was quite pleased to learn in the seclusion of my own home. Compared to the possibility of
dropping a motorcycle or launching myself into some unforgiving obstacle amid a group of peers, waving my limbs around with a group of strangers in a group class is the more intimidating idea. At least motorcycle gear provides a degree of anonymity. Self-conscious to a state of mortification? Strap a motorcycle helmet (preferably with a tinted visor) to your head. Problem solved.
Which brings up the matter of “gear”. With a motorcycle, the requisite gear includes protective equipment from head to toe. Helmet. Gloves. Sturdy Leather jacket and boots. Etcetera. Riding without the gear is dumb. The idea is to reduce one’s risk and vulnerability during an inherently vulnerable and dangerous activity. Meanwhile, with Tai Chi, I seem to get away with loose, light clothing such as a pair of baggy sweat pants and a t-shirt plus a pair of moccasins or socks. My Tai Chi gear isn’t designed to provide protection in the event of an eighty kilometer per hour crash. It is designed to allow movement and flexibility. My motorcycle gear hid and protected my frail forty plus year old body. My tai chi gear un-inhibits and connects me with my my even more frail fifty year old body.
Thanks to the generosity of Youtube’s community of content providers and potential Tai Chi experts I was able to find a few teachers who were offering free, reasonably detailed and easy to follow instructions on how to get started with the one hundred and eight movements contained within the martial art known as Tai Chi.
One hundred and eight movements!
It seems to be an established perception that the physics of motorcycling is like life itself -a complex and imperfectly understood thing. I’m not certain if anyone has taken the trouble to catalog the number of critical motions and combinations of motions that are required for riding. A dozen? Two dozen? Whatever the exact number may be – it surely pales compared to Tai Chi’s one hundred and eight.
After a little more than a year of practicing Tai Chi, I am still an utter beginner. I rely on about a dozen movements that I enjoy. I no longer feel a nagging, hurky-jerky impulse to correct myself or remind myself how to move. I still move far more quickly than I think that I should and I don’t quite feel that I’m able to extend my range of motion much over what I had twelve or fifteen months earlier. But I feel that I have taken control over my own process of learning.
Whether riding a motorcycle or learning to waggle my limbs in something that approaches a synchronized and intentional way, I am learning a new physical ability. Let’s not call it a skill yet. With the motorcycle, I was tremendously satisfied with the confidence and courage that I acquired as I learned. Learning something new, something with its own immediate risk but not with potentially dire life consequences, is a terrific way to relearn who you are physically, intellectually and emotionally. With Tai Chi, I am experiencing the same learning and self-connection.
There is a maxim that is recited in any number of training environments that goes something like… “slow is smooth and smooth is fast”. While learning these activities, the good sense of the phrase emerges in different ways. With the bike, taking time to learn how to operate the clutch; how to smoothly change gears, how to be in control and attentive without being over-stimulated is a better done at slow speeds…and over time. With Tai Chi, learning to move slowly, how to be in control of my breathing and movements without over-stimulating is just as challenging.
I don’t regret deferring the experience of riding a motorcycle until I was in my mid-forties. I’d long out-grown any dangerously immature cravings for speed that I may have had as a younger person. And I now know that I needed the opportunity to step out of a state of mind that didn’t leave room for me to be an eager and joyful beginner. In a way, deferring the pleasure of riding until my forties and the pleasure of learning tai chi until my fifties have been much-needed opportunities to rearrange and enhance my sense of identity and my ability to cope with significant forces and events in my life over which I have little to no control.
Deciding to be a beginner is what has allowed a Zensylvania state of mind to exist.
Zensylvania: It's a State of Mind 