Robert M Pirsig
Robert M Pirsig was an american philosopher and
writer (1928 - 2017). He published only two books. The first one became a cult book that sold in millions of copies all over the world. The
second for some reason never became the same success, although it is at least as thought-provoking as the first one.
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- an Inquiry into Values" (1974)
I do not hesitate to declaire that if I were to name one book being the best I read in my whole life,
this would be the one.
But what has Zen-buddhism got to do with screwing on a motorcycle ?
Perhaps more than you would think. An example from the book: Imagine your motcycle won't start. You have checked everything you can think of as
the reason for this, but still it will not start. You have no idea what to do. You are empty, zeroed. Then you actually are in a state of mind
similar to what zen-monks are trying to attain through longlasting meditation. It is in such a situation the chances are at the best for you to
think really new thoughts or get really new ideas. Not necessarily thoughts or ideas that will solve your actual problem, but perhaps something
that may solve some other problem ?
Very briefly told the book is about a man who travels with his son on a motorcycle from the American Mid-west, up in the Rocky Mountains and down to the
Pacific Coast. But this external story constitutes only about 5% of the book. The remains are what you could call a philosophical thriller.
The man has recently been through a deep personal crisis that ended with him being put into a mental hospital. The background was that he one
afternoon at the school where he lectured in philosophy and retorics had started pondering what the expression "quality" actually means. The result
of these ponderings are what is told in this philosophical thriller.
Pirsig presents a number of relatively heavy philosophical questions in a so engaging way that it is difficult to put the book aside, except for
breakes you have to take to let his thoughts sink down in you. Very few, if any, books I have read have been able to provoke so much new thoughts in
my own head as this one.
It will take too much space her to say very much more about the content of the book. But one could say that Pirsig makes a very good attempt to
try to find out how we are to understand the world, after the discovery that Einstein and the other nuclear physicians made 120 years ago, that what up
to then had been regarded as the "objective reality" simply did not exist. You can read more about that in the review of
Gary Zukav's book "The Dancing Wu Li Masters"
"Lila - an Inquiry into Morals" (1991)
Now we are on a sailing trip on the Hudson River downstreams to New York City. The travelling companion this time is the young woman Lila, whom he
accidentally picks up in one of the harbours along the river. As in the first book the description of the journey is a minor part of the story, the
bulk of the books is also this time a philosophical thriller. He continues to develop his thoughts from "The Motorcycle Book". Now he tries to put up
a more complete framework for understanding of more or less everything - the universe and the laws that governs it, what we call inorganic materia, how life
came into existence in a kind of disobedience to the laws of the universe, how life has developed from the very first primitive forms up to the so far
most advanced species, that means the humans, how the humans in their turn have developed advanced societies that have given many of us a much better life,
although they also control and manipulate us in a much higher degree than most of us have realized, and finally - the development of our ability to think and
reflect about all of this, and thus also the ability to resists the restrictions these societies expose us to. This framework he calls "Dynamic Quality",
which he also describes as something similar to what the native american tribes called "The Great Spirit", referring to the great coherence they observed
in nature. And the idea of this "Dynamic Quality" also comprehends an idea of its steadily growing higher forms of moral, as the subtitle suggests.
"On Quality - an Inquiry into Excellence" (2022)
Five years after his death his widow Wendy M Pirsig has made a collection and an edition of some of his unpublished texts. Unfortunately
the result is not very interesting. The succession of the various texts seems rather accidental, and it is difficult to see in what way they
are thought to be connected. Those who have read the Motorcycle Book or Lila will not find much new here, except a short description of the life story
of Robert M Pirsig. And for those who have not read these two books, I will warmly recommend rather to read them (and first of all the Motorcycle)
instead of this one.
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In spite of the title, and in spite of the fact that these issues are touched in the book, it does not really tell you much neither about
zen-buddhism or about how to maintain a motorcycle. If you perhaps believed so to be the case.
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