Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Offline Ok gang, I have first read this book about 12 years ago when my mastery of the English language was pedestrian at best. I found it a difficult read, but I remember being FASCINATED by the whole Quality bit, it blew my young mind. I have treated the book with the respect I attribute all concepts that I find fascinating but not yet fully comprehend.
Well, I was walking through the mall the other day, and I saw it being sold outside a book store. I have started reading it again, but this time I'm actually trying to read between the lines, maybe devoting way too much energy to the damn book, it is a bit tedious much like studying.
Any thoughts on this classic book? I'm sure that some of you have read it, I want to know what you think of it.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
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I haven't read it. My husband thinks it is some sort of revealed truth.
One of these days I may read it.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Well many,many people read this book and thought that it was a great Philosophical essay,and back in the late 70's I also thought that it was good, but now I think that its a piece of shit,that fooled a lot of people to believe that the Buddhist had a point.
Signature ? How ?
bought for me by a girl I cared about and I duly waded through. It was clear there was something wrong when Pirsig starts suggesting (oh, I'm projecting, I know it), that those who don't maintain their own motorbikes aren't rational. You need to buy some antique oil spilling shitbox and change your own oil in order to understand the true nature of being. Of course, later, the idea that living in the moment is actually fine surfaces and it's all about selecting the right way of being for a given moment - romantic or rational.
I was further discomforted by an immediate dislike for the Phaedrus character. I personally found the book hard going. I sometimes see it on my bookshelf and think about giving it another try with my older brain but bridle every time.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
hehe, yes, there are a few things in there that the second time around seem... irrational... for lack of a better word. But it does have it's poetic beauty and the neo-taoistic, pseudo-buddhist spirituality rings true to my own personal philosophy, save the irrational bits. Also the insanity bit of the book I found fascinating, and just getting around to it now. I do find it less cryptic the second time around. The implied depth of some of the ideas become shallow misunderstandings.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
I found it rather mediocre, but it still passes the time on CQ shift. I just felt like it was trying to blindly shove its way through concepts the author couldn't quite portray through the characters.
“I join you [John Adams], therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character.”
“In every country and in every age the priest [any and every clergyman] has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.” Thomas Jefferson