In the introduction to the 25th anniversary edition, the author Robert M. Pirsig makes some admissions. He acknowledges a major and a minor error in his work, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

The minor mistake is the misnaming of the ostensible "hero" of the tale, which renders the character's supposed symbolism null. The major mistake, on the other hand, is the failure to give the reader a clear indication of which character is speaking at the conclusion of the book.

His confession follows an author's note where he admits to precious little accuracy about Zen Buddhism and even less useful information about motorcycles.

After all these admissions, it's no wonder that the reviewer fails to grasp the author's supposed superiority as a thinker. How can he be taken seriously as a philosopher when he can't even get a character's name right?

A scene at the University of Chicago, where the author describes his intellectual knockout punch to a professor, reads like low comedy. The narrator's tedious exposition drags along, and the tale of the motorcycle trip lingers only on descriptions of toolkits and oil changes.

The father-son interactions are limited to uninformative dialogue, and the protagonist is a self-absorbed asshole.

Pirsig also fails in his choice of the word "quality" to signify an ineffable something. It becomes obvious early on that he means "high quality" or "top quality", and there are better words to convey this concept.

This book, which is surpassed only by the works of Ayn Rand in solipsistic wankage, was most popular in the 1970s. The reviewer blames the cultural and spiritual rot that followed in the 1980s on megalomaniacs like Pirsig and Rand.

I just re-read this book and HAD to annotate it because it sent my head swimming. I'd studied quite a lot of philosophy since I read it a year and a half ago and so the philosophies didn't go over my head this time.

First, I must say if you find the narrator off-putting, rest assured that the protagonist is NOT the narrator. The narrator is the nemesis who has eclipsed the protagonist; the story reveals their struggle. The introduction of my edition hints at this, but apparently some people haven't gotten that as I've read comments of several people complaining about the narrator.

Robert Pirsig’s genius in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is to insert classical forms of thought into the backdrop of a cross-country motorcycle trip. He piques our interest by waxing philosophical in an effort to get to the root of the ghost story haunting him. He succeeds in creating the quintessential philosophy book of the 20th Century.

It turns out that the motorcycle is a symbol of the soul.

A brief summary of Pirsig’s “chautauquas” follows, but bear in mind that this list is informational, whereas his book is spirited and transformational. (Chautauqua means “talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer.” p. 15)

There are two ways of experiencing a motorcycle:

1. Romantically—riding a cycle down a mountain road, invigorated by the wind rushing past.

2. Classically—familiarizing yourself with the working parts of the machine, developing a feel for how tight to secure the bolts.

Romantic experience is “in the moment.”

Classical experience connects the past to the future, allowing us to build on previous knowledge:

1. Systems of Components and Functions—physical working parts which we come to know either:

a. Empirically—knowledge gained by the senses.

b. a priori—knowledge gained intuitively (known without prior experience).

2. Concepts—Ideas with the potential to be realized (the thought precedes the creation of the physical object).

a. Inductive ideas start with observing specific examples and end with a general conclusion.

b. Deductive ideas start with general knowledge used to predict specific observations.

Connecting the Romantic to the Classical is Quality. To care about something will increase its quality.

Pirsig creates an analogy comparing knowledge to a railroad train that is always going somewhere:

• Classic Knowledge is the engine and the cars.

• Romantic reality adds the dimension of time—it is the cutting edge of the experience, the moment in time.

• Traditional knowledge is the body of classic knowledge plus the history of where the train has been.

• Quality is the track—the “preintellectual reality” or “the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place” (p. 247). What carries the train forward is a sense of what is good. It is understood intuitively and enhanced by skill and experience.

• If your train gets stuck, understand two things:

o Being stuck eventually produces real understanding as you look for the solution in your train of knowledge. (A classical experience)

o Don’t be afraid to stop and analyze—you can see in patterns not only the physical object but the idea or function of the object. Eventually you will be able to break through barriers.

Creative energy is “gumption” or enthusiasm (enthousiasmos means literally “filled with theos” or God—appropriate since God is the inspiration of creativity).

Gumption Traps (“An examination of affective, cognitive and psychomotor blocks in the perception of Quality” p. 305) :

1. External (Setbacks)

2. Internal (Hangups)

a. Inability to learn new facts—slow down and decide if the things you thought were important are really important or if the things you thought were insignificant are more important than you thought.

b. Ego (falsely inflated self-image)—let your work struggles teach you to be quiet and modest.

c. Anxiety (opposite of Ego; you’re afraid you won’t get it right so you freeze up or don’t try)—“work out your anxieties on paper” (p. 315) Read about the topic, organize your thoughts on paper; remember even the best make plenty of mistakes.

d. Boredom—take a break, rest, or clean out your space.

e. Impatience (results from an “underestimation of the amount of time the job will take” p. 317)—allow yourself plenty of time to finish the job, break the job down into smaller goals.

Quality is understood in Western Culture as arête/excellence.

Quality is understood in Eastern Culture as dharma/”duty to self”.

Early cultures used Rhetoric to teach Quality in terms of virtue, but after some time the technique of rhetoric was corrupted by the Sophists as ethical relativism. (pp. 376-77) Socrates took issue with the Sophists and established dialogues—or the Dialectic (discussions through which the Truth can be arrived at). Excellence became subordinate to Truth. Rhetoric fell from its supreme position of Excellence (Quality) to teaching mannerisms and forms of writing and speaking.

Quality, Pirsig discovers, is "the Tao, the great central generating force of all religions, Oriental and Occidental, past and present, all knowledge, everything." (p. 254)

OK, perhaps I'm being a touch too severe. In truth, I did take pleasure in the concept of the cross-country motorcycle ride. The details regarding motorcycle mechanics were also interesting, and in particular, the portrayal of the narrator's relationship with his son was quite engaging. The son was indeed the finest aspect of the entire book. Regrettably, there wasn't an abundance of space dedicated to Sonny. This was because dad was overly occupied promoting the author's purported brilliant philosophical insights. Even more disappointingly, those insights weren't actually brilliant at all and they consumed hundreds of tiresome pages. It occurred to me to question whether the author was attempting to convey the idea that the narrator was a pompous fool. However, the intention seemingly was for the reader to be astounded by the supposed brilliance of the narrator's philosophical insights and, by extension, by the brilliance of the author who conceived of the narrator and those philosophical musings. I can scarcely believe that I managed to get through 380 pages of this.

I learned from this book that it is possible to sell a billion copies of a book that no one should ever waste three minutes reading.

This is just another neo-philosophy book disguised as a novel. It seems that the only reason people buy this book is to gain acceptance from their pseudo-intellectual (or rather, pompous scumbag) friends into the hippie circle.

Although I know around twenty people who claim to have read this book, I have yet to encounter a single person who truly understands what it's about. In my opinion, this book is a far greater hoax than the Bible.

I have written these words, and so, therefore, it must be the truth.

Perhaps we should be more discerning when it comes to the books we choose to read, rather than blindly following the trends and fads.

We should strive to find books that truly offer value and enlightenment, rather than those that are simply hyped up for commercial gain.

After all, our time is precious, and we should not waste it on reading books that are nothing more than a waste of paper.

Brilliant! Pirsig might be somewhat of an American Montaigne, producing readable philosophy with a minimum of abstractions. That's truly a gift. After undergoing electro-convulsive therapy 28 times, Pirsig, in this book, creates a doppelgänger-like alter-ego, Phaedrus, for his formerly insane self. He bravely attempts to piece together the thoughts of that formerly insane self in order to learn from it. This alone is fascinating.

At the same time, Pirsig is reviewing aspects of eastern and western philosophical thought. I need books that make philosophy comprehensible. All too often, I find the great geniuses incoherent amid their heaped abstractions. Another recent philosophy-decrypting book I found helpful was Sarah Bakewell's At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails, in which the author lays bare the foundations of phenomenology and existentialism. Another was Walter Kaufman's Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. But while those books are, in the first case, explications of two related schools of philosophy, and in the second, of a particular philosopher's thought and how it was abused by fascists, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a forensic reconstruction of a philosophy which sent its author to the nut house.

In that respect alone, the book represents an astonishing act of bravery in the face of unimaginable suffering. Quality is explained as part of a trinity not equivalent to mind and matter, but anterior to it. Quality is the proto-reality that exists before our minds can hitch analogues to sensed perceptions. I didn't quite understand it at first either. Probably because these were the arguments that led Phaedrus to 28 electro-convulsive therapies and a long hospitalization. He “...felt something let go” and was overwhelmed with a “whole new flood of philosophical associations.” He pulls out his copy of the Tao Te Ching and there it is, his idea of Quality, as revealed by the mystic Lao Tzu 2,400 years ago. Insanity.

But then slowly, under the patient questioning of the recovered post-treatment Pirsig, the argument begins to coalesce. We are then introduced to Jules Henri Poincaré and learn of the crisis in the exact sciences of his day. Poincaré goes on to discover the subjectivity of systems, his point of departure being Euclid's troublesome Fifth Postulate. Poincaré determines that it is facts which are infinite and it is up to the human mind to select subliminal factual harmonies—the mathematicians’s beautiful proof, for example—which rises to consciousness seemingly unbidden in the form of eureka moments. Thereby, says Poincaré, are systems devised and they are legion. In coming to this conclusion, it turns out, Poincaré long ago built a back channel to the idea of Quality Phaedrus would develop.

I have neglected to mention the alternative narrative with which all this woolgathering is contrasted—Moby-Dick-style—and that is the cross country motorcycle trip the author takes through Montana and Idaho and Oregon and California with his son, Chris. That storyline ties in with the philosophy in a subtle mutually supporting way that's a joy to read. I enjoyed the attack on Aristotle, whom I've always found unreadable. But how Pirsig can make sitting through doctoral seminars so riveting is something to be pondered. It helps, I suppose, if one's teachers are complete assholes, as they are here. The haymaker Phaedrus delivers to the glass jaw of the Great Books curriculum at the University of Chicago is enormous fun to read about. Phaedrus attends a course on rhetoric there that is—by Pirsig's later definition—insane. Pirsig claims that everything not on the metaphorical train of Quality is by definition insanity. That's why he can't leave the train, no one can. I look forward to reading this one again. A Great Book in itself perhaps. Recommended with alacrity.

This book is truly outstanding and of great significance.

It is not only a profound treatise on metaphysics but also a captivating story that the author claims is autobiographical.

It accurately presents the scientific method and the way we, as a society and as individuals, seek truth.

The analogy of working on motorcycles is excellent.

In my life, it has been programming computers and understanding how to make industrial machinery function, but the same process applies to all of these.

The most remarkable aspect of this book, in my opinion, is that it points out the step where mystery enters, namely, coming up with new hypotheses.

The long-awaited "aha" moment that occurs when working on a difficult problem.

Science has no specific method for how one achieves this.

You simply engage with the problem, turn it over in your mind, try different things, strive to understand, and then sometimes the answer appears in your head.

It is a complete mystery.

There are numerous stories in the history of science, such as Kekule's discovery of the ring structure of Benzene from a dream about a snake swallowing its tail, and Einstein at age 13 imagining what it would be like to ride the crest of a light wave.

This book reveals that at the heart of science lies something generative and alive that defies scientific explanation, precisely because it is outside the system.

"The truth knocks on your door, and you say 'Go away! I'm looking for the truth!' so it goes away." This is such an accurate portrayal of how our preconceived ideas often prevent us from finding the truth.

(The truth, in this context, is completely knowable once we have discovered it. I mean, if the motorcycle runs afterwards, then we have solved the problem. That's why I love applied science and engineering.)

Another great idea from this book that I use constantly is that the very cutting edge, the point where the tire tread meets the pavement, is always messy, confusing, and a place of floundering in uncertainty.

He makes the analogy of a train, with all the cars filled with facts that we know, and the engine, where new track is being laid, is not contained in any of the cars.

It is always murky up there, and never neat and well-defined.

So, that unpleasant feeling of uncertainty, confusion, and floundering is precisely what we should cultivate in order to discover the truth.

I tell myself that when I am in that situation, I should embrace this feeling rather than dread it.

(And, in fact, I am mostly paid because I can endure that feeling until the payoff, the "aha" part. The most important thing I learned in college is that something utterly confusing and baffling can become clear if I invest the effort to engage with it and figure it out. So I get to do that all the time now. =))

What I have discovered in the years of troubleshooting programs or machines and fixing them is that very little in life and the universe is well-understood.

We have this extensive mental construct of scientific understanding, and it is indeed impressive.

We can cure typhoid now and build bridges that remain standing (conscious irony).

But even in the areas that we think are very well-known, neat, and clear, there is still so much that is not understood.

Otherwise, why would these questions continuously arise?

Why doesn't this program work? Why is my pulper feed system not functioning as expected? Why did my motorcycle engine perform so poorly in the mountains? What caused this bridge to suddenly collapse during rush hour?

This book delves into all of these ideas and provides a great deal of illumination.

I have a much better understanding of the universe as a result of reading this book.

That's why I gave it 5 stars, a rating I reserve for books that have changed who I am or how I perceive the world.

If I were to have a special shelf labeled "Ugh," without a doubt, this particular thing would find its place right on it. I'm still plodding along, slogging through this seemingly never-ending task. Seriously, how long have I been engaged in reading this thing now? It feels like an eternity, perhaps around 123 months or something equally absurd. Oh, just eff ME! This whole experience has been so frustrating and tiresome. I can't wait for it to be over. But here I am, still stuck with it, hoping against hope that there will be some glimmer of light at the end of this long and arduous tunnel.

This novel delves deep into and examines the age-old questions.

Who am I? This is a fundamental query that has puzzled humanity for centuries. It makes us reflect on our identity, our values, and what makes us unique.

Where am I going? This question forces us to consider our goals, our dreams, and the path we are taking in life.

What will it be like when I get there? This is a speculation about the future, about the outcome of our journey.

All of these questions are centered around the one thing we hold most dear - life.

If you are expecting, or perhaps hoping, to find definitive answers to these questions, maybe even your own personal questions, then this novel may not be the right fit for you.

However, then again, it just might be.

It could offer new perspectives,引发思考, and inspire you to look at life in a different way.

And that is my answer to one of your questions.

This is a book that is truly worth reading.

Particularly if you are a motorcycle enthusiast. The author offers a wealth of practical insights into the sense of peace that can be achieved through riding and maintaining motorcycles.

However, the pointers on motorcycle maintenance are just a small fraction of this ambitious book. It delves much deeper into various aspects such as communication, relationships, inner peace, and even the very nature of reality.

By exploring these themes, the author provides a comprehensive and thought-provoking perspective that goes beyond the realm of just motorcycles.

Whether you are a rider looking for a deeper understanding of the hobby or someone interested in personal growth and self-discovery, this book has something to offer.

It challenges you to think about the bigger picture and how riding a motorcycle can be more than just a means of transportation or a hobby.

It can be a source of inspiration, a way to connect with others, and a path to finding inner peace and fulfillment.

So, if you are looking for a book that will not only educate but also inspire you, this is definitely one to add to your reading list.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig

The first reading date was on the 3rd of November 1990.

The title is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"; the title on the cover is the same. The author is Robert Pirsig, and the translator is Asadollah Tahiri. It was published in Tehran by Shabaviz in 1987 (1366 in the Iranian calendar), with 530 pages and the ISBN 9645511542. The subject is "Zen - 20th century".

It is the author's memories of a seventeen-day journey from Minnesota to California on a motorcycle. During the travelogue, Pirsig explains his philosophical views and elaborates on the dimension of "quality". The title of the book is a kind of play on the title of an article called "Zen and the Art of Archery" which was published in 1936 by a German author named Eugen Herrigel after studying Japanese Zen philosophy and culture. Pirsig states at the beginning of his book that, contrary to its title, it does not contain precise information about Japanese Zen culture or motorcycles. a. Sharbiani

I've heard about this book for years. However, I never found the idea of reading it attractive. The hardcover from William Morrow and Company just sat on my shelves for a long time. It collected dust and seemed to be fighting off feelings of inferiority compared to its more frequently chosen neighboring books. What do I really know or care about motorcycles? Why do I have to read another book about a practice like Zen that claims to be indescribable? A few Zen koans and some of D. T. Suzuki's treatises are enough for me to understand the general idea. Anyway, the title, the unremarkable blackboard binding, the lack of public attention today, and my own limited thinking all kept this book out of my mind. That was until the recent news of Pirsig's death.

This event made me reevaluate my stance towards the book. Maybe there was more to it than I initially thought. I started to wonder if I had been too quick to dismiss it. The fact that it had been around for so long and had such an impact on many people might suggest that it held some hidden treasures. I decided to give it a chance and finally pick it up. Who knows what I might discover?

Read full review here: http://chrisvia.wordpress.com/2017/09...

Preachy, self-congratulatory hogwash.

The worst part is that his message could have been a good one. "Self-sufficiency is the key to personal empowerment." Anybody who has ever met me knows that I am a poster child of that ethos.

Pirsig, however, manages to ruin a good sentiment with his self-righteous back slapping and blatant finger pointing. If self-empowerment is your ultimate goal, why do you need to constantly rely on the plight of non-believers to prove your point?

Here's a novel idea: focus on yourself and what you have learned. Since when has the path to discovery been paved with snarky intolerance? What an asshole.

It is truly disheartening to see a potentially valuable message being overshadowed by such negative and unproductive behavior. Instead of trying to belittle others, one should strive to inspire and uplift. After all, the true essence of personal empowerment lies in one's own growth and development, not in tearing others down.

We should all strive to be more understanding and包容, and to approach life with a positive and open mind. Only then can we truly achieve personal empowerment and make a positive impact on the world around us.