Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
January 2016 - I just finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM). It was very appropriate that I started reading it in September. I had just bought my second sailboat “Serendipity” and the very week I hydro locked the engine and had to replace the diesel fuel injectors, I began reading this book.
It’s sort of an auto-biography about a protagonist (or antagonist) that rides his motorcycle across northwest America from Minnesota to California with his son. On one hand, he focuses on the scenery of rural towns, farmland and people along his ride as well as the classical techniques used to maintain their motorcycle. He breaks down the analytical side of our brain used to change the oil, tighten the chain, repair leaks, etc.
I really feel this is something I need as I’ve been turning a wrench more days than not for the past several months changing the oil on the new sailboat four times already, changing the coolant, bleeding air from the fuel lines, installing pump switches, etc.
I really never was handy personally. My twin brother Tom always took the clocks and watches apart to see how they ticked. When my Dad bought me a wrecked 1985 Ford Mercury Cougar when I was 15, it was Tom in the garage day and night with Dad installing the new radiator, hoses, fender, hood and other parts we had found in the junkyards near Selmer, TN. Apparently I was too busy at play practice, which is what my Dad told me when he caught me taking credit for rebuilding the car once.
I accidentally left this book on the boat when I returned to Atlanta for the month of November. In the meantime I read “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman” which is about the Nobel Physics winning teacher Richard Feynman. It’s also an autobiography which starts out telling how as a young child he took apart radios during the depression era 1930’s and eventually became a college professor. He’s a practical joker that worked on the Manhattan project, lived briefly in Brazil and was one of the smartest minds of the 20th century. While he dabbled with meditation especially while floating in isolation tanks and met Ram Dass, he was a scientist and believed in no higher power. Some similarities with ZAMM. This book is truly hilarious and I cannot recommend it higher, but I digress.
Unlike Tom or Mr. Feynman, I barely get by mechanically. I have tools but don’t ask me to use them daily. (Raquel’s biggest doubt about this trip is my ability to repair the boat on a regular basis which really hits me at the core.) But I’m more a Jack of all Trades. I can fix a toilet or replace a sink cartridge on a leaky faucet, both jobs I’ve had to do on the boat already, but when the going gets serious I usually have to hire a contractor. The guy I’m using now from Weathermark Marine not only teaches sailing but fixes everything on a boat from A to Z. Of course he’s my new idol. Yesterday we installed a new holding tank, toilet vent filter and then put in a double eye splice into the whisker pole topping lift.
Anyhow, the ZAMM book slowly describes the difference between classic and romantic types, or objective versus subjective, physical versus mental, etc. The author talks about Gumption, or the mental fuel required to recharge before tackling a tough job. We all need to constantly resupply ourselves with gumption no matter the task. Some people get it flyfishing, or sailing or hunting or knitting (Raquel has started coloring as a creative outlet) but it usually involves some solitary time usually in nature. Maybe it’s meditation. (It’s probably not watching TV although I’ve been doing too much of that lately too ;)
The narrator says you don’t usually find mechanics that are loud mouthed with big egos because of all the small intermittent failures and setbacks that must be experienced when working on something that requires trial by error. He methodically laid out the Gumption traps such as the Ego trap, where you are over confident and don’t estimate enough time for the job and get fooled into making mistakes. That happened to me when I bled the wrong nuts on the fuel lines and didn’t close the thru hole of the raw water intake and sucked water into the engine or when I estimated it would only take me 3 months to fix the list of 116 items on the survey inspection report. Or the Anxiety trap which is when you underestimate your abilities and procrastinate, which is also something I’ve been doing a lot lately too. At first I thought, this book is gonna be great, just what I need to read about.....
But Motorcycle (or Sailboat) Maintenance isn’t really what the book is about, it’s really about the search for Zen, or Quality as the author calls it. There’s another character in the book called Phaedrus. Phaedrus is a ghost. This book was written around 1972, the same time I was born. It was published in 1974. It’s a million plus seller for a reason, but since it’s been out so long if you want to read it go ahead, but I’m about to write about some spoilers here going forward.
Phaedrus went insane searching for Quality. Quality is the relationship between Physical and Mental, or the spirit or soul. Phaedrus was a Philosophy and Rhetoric professor and he wanted to do his thesis on something he couldn’t rationally define called Quality. But he was stuck between a rock and hard place because if you can’t rationally define something within “The Church of Reason” then you’re stuck because it could be anything really. It’s like proving scientifically that God exists. Impossible because science deals with objects or substance. Even the mental sciences are immature compared to the hard sciences. Is there any science that studies the space in between the spaces? Maybe oriental philosophy or religion, but this science so far is very subjective, just read Ram Dass’s “Be Here Now” or “The Universe in a Single Atom” by the Dalai Lama. Mr. Feynman’s Quantum Mechanics has a long way to go but that won’t stop me from reading his next three books.
I, Brian Liddy, can also relate to this part of ZAMM. I basically quit my job three years ago in search for Quality. Not work life balance although surely that helps. I want to find The ANSWER, you know, to life, the universe, everything. (Yes I just re-watched the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe as well.)
Like Phaedrus, I’ve visited Gurus in Indian Monasteries, I’ve read the Upanishads, I’ve searched for meaning through yoga, meditation, prayer, contemplation, and given enough practice, these things do work. But they are hard work, daily grinds with baby steps and minuscule physical results, but that’s not the purpose. You realize that there’s not a single answer (42), just as there is no single question. Here’s my favorite quote from Chapter 16 that relates to this search:
“Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. The allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in the sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are souls."
Phaedrus studies Greek Philosophy and ultimately identifies with Sophists, something I’ve also done diligently on my own for the past several years, purchasing more books than I could read in a lifetime and devouring as many as possible. I especially like “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius. But somewhat like St. John of the Cross’ “Dark Night of the Soul” the more you explore the great unknown the darker it gets, the edge of life is a bleeding edge with more and more traps.
A year ago I had just spent ~30 days in solitude, reading/writing/sailing/meditating under a vow of silence on my little sailboat on a lake in Georgia. My gumption tank was overflowing, epiphanies about a new career as a sailing instructor, moving to the coast, getting engaged and changing my lifestyle ensued. I’m basically living a lifelong dream of cruising to the Bahamas on my new sailboat. But boy oh boy are there so many traps around....(Yesterday I ordered a new galley sink trap after visiting 5 hardware, plumbing and marine part stores, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.)
Now, I don’t think I’m going insane, I hope, but damn is this a good book to read right about now. As readers we all put ourselves into the mind of the narrator and try to use our own personal life experiences as a reflection to deal with the author’s intended purpose. Well, Bravo Mr. Robert M. Pirsig, it may have taken me 43 years to read your book, but I definitely wasn’t ready until now. I had to read “The Alchemist” first, and Thoreau’s “Walden,” and Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha,” and the “Tao de Ching” by Lao Tzu, and Aldous Huxley’s “Perennial Philosophy” (which really blew my mind). Oh by the way, most of these books as well as 10 others I’ve read are listed in the bibliography as books that Influenced the writing of ZAMM. It’s complex, I could only read one chapter a night, and many times had to reread them over and over again just to get what he was talking about....It’s the same thing Ken Wilber talks about in “A Brief History of Everything.” About how we all are evolving to higher levels of consciousness and interconnectivity above the flatlands of science and reason alone. I’m glad somebody gets it. In fact, many people get it. In the Afterward it states that Pirsig wrote a sequel to ZAMM titled “Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals.” Apparently the author lived on a sailboat and wrote about Phaedrus’s sailing journey down the Hudson River. Now isn’t that a coincidence? Or is it Serendipity?
