Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

     "What I wanted to say..is that I've a set of instructions at home which open up great realms for the improvement of technical writing.  They begin, 'Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.' "
     This produces more laughter, but Sylvia and Gennie and the sculptor give sharp looks of recognition.
     "That's a good instruction," the sculptor says.  Gennie nods too.
     "That's kind of why I saved it," I say, "At first I laughed because of memories of bicycles I'd put together, and of course, the unintended slur on Japanese manufacture.  But there's a lot of wisdom in that statement...
     "Peace of mind isn't at all superficial, really," I expound.  "It's the whole thing.  That which produces it is good maintenance;  that which disturbs it is poor maintenance.  What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind.  The ultimate test's always your own serenity.  If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working on you're likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself."

…………..……………………………………………………………………………………………….

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself."

…………..…………..............................................................................................................................

"The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.  Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind.  The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon."


Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Heaven

"Heaven" has different Signs - to me -
Sometimes, I think that Noon -
Is but a symbol of the Place -
And when again, at Dawn,

A mighty look runs round the World
And settles in the Hills -
An Awe if it should be like that
Opon the Ignorance steals -

The Orchard, when the Sun is on -
The Triumph of the Birds
When they together Victory make -
Some Carnivals of Clouds -

The Rapture of a finished Day
Returning to the West -
All of these - remind us of the place
That Men call "Paradise" -

Itself be fairer - we suppose -
But how Ourself, shall be
Adorned, for a Superior Grace -
Not yet our eyes can see -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 536

The Best Students

A portion of the middle of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a meditation on education.  The following scene stands out in a way that encapsulates Phaedrus' educational journey:

"...every teacher tends to grade up students who resemble him the most....Well there's something wacky here,"  Phaedrus had said, "because the students I like the most, the ones I really feel a sense of identity with, are all failing!"
    DeWeese had completely broken up with laughter at this and left Phaedrus feeling miffed.  He had seen it as a kind of scientific phenomenon that might offer clues to new understanding, and DeWeese had just laughed.
     At first he thought DeWeese was just laughing at his unintended insult to himself.  But that didn't fit because DeWeese wasn't a derogatory person at all.  Later he saw it was a kind of supertruth laugh.  The best students always are flunking.  Every good teacher knows that.  It was a kind of laughter that destroys tensions produced by impossible situations....


Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Time and Eternity

Some - Work for Immortality -
The Chiefer part, for Time -
He - Compensates - immediately -
The former - Checks - on Fame -

Slow Gold - but Everlasting -
The Boullion of Today -
Contrasted with the Currency
Of Immortality -

A Beggar - Here and There -
Is gifted to discern
Beyond the Broker's insight -
One's - Money - One's - the Mine -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 536

The Spirit enlighteneth every man through the world

I've often speculated that the word "through" in D&C 84:46 might not just mean that the spirit enlightens men throughout the world, but also that the spirit uses our experiences in the world to enlighten us if we will allow it.  Vaclav Havel has something similar to say -

"And here we encounter, in a new form, the profoundly paradoxical nature of human existence: the "I" can only approach the kind of Being it longs for (i.e., in the fullness of being) through its own existence-in-the-world, and the manner of that existence.  It can neither skip over that existence, nor get around, nor avoid it nor ignore it."

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

Some Sayings of the Buddha

• "Few among men are they who cross to the further shore.  The others merely run up and down the bank on this side."
• "He whose senses are mastered like horses well under the charioteers control, he who is purged of pride, free from passions, such a one even the gods envy (hold dear)."
• "He who holds back arisen anger as one checks a whirling chariot, him I call a charioteer, the rest just hold the reins."
• "Conquer anger by love, evil by good; conquer the miser with liberality, and the liar with truth."

I chose these sayings from Rahula's selections from the Dhammapada because of their resonance with scriptural truths I have found to be important.  The first and fourth evoke some sayings of the Savior.  The middle two bring my mind to Alma's exhortation to his son to "bridle his passions."

Books!!!

Unto my books - so good to turn -
Far ends of tired Days -
It half endears the Abstinence -
And Pain - is missed - in Praise -

As Flavors - cheer Retarded Guests
With Banquettings to be -
So Spices - stimulate the time -
Till my small Library -

It may be Wilderness - without -
Far feet of failing Men -
But Holiday - excludes the night -
And it is Bells - within -

I thank these Kinsmen of the Shelf -
Their Countenances Kid -
Enamour - in Prospective -
And satisfy - obtained -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 512

I do find my books, my own "small library" augmented temporarily by borrowings from the four library systems that I have access to, indeed brings solace to "far ends of tired days."  Sometimes the very sight of a book's countenance (whether leather or not) can "enamour in prospective" of future reading pleasures.  This blog is a small glimpse into the satisfactions of that reading.

Turn the Other Cheek

Quotes from the Buddha in the Dhammapada:

"Never by hatred is hatred appeased, but it is appeased by kindness.  This is an eternal truth."

"One should win anger through kindness, wickedness through goodness, selfishness through charity, and falsehood through truthfulness."

"He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me,  he robbed me: the hatred of those who harbor such thoughts is not assuaged."

"One should not pry into the faults of others, into things done and left undone by others.  One should rather consider what by oneself is done and left undone."


Quoted from
Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught 

Some of the Buddha's sayings in the Dhammapada are reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount.

Presentiment

Presentiment - is the long shadow - on the Lawn -
Indicative that Suns go down -

The notice to the startled Grass
That Darkness - is about to pass -



Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 487

What can mindfulness accomplish?

"Say you are really angry, overpowered by anger, ill-will, hatred.  It is curious and paradoxical, that the man who is in anger is not really aware, not mindful that he is angry.  The moment he becomes aware and mindful of that state of his mind, the moment he sees his anger, it becomes, as if it were, shy and ashamed, and begins to subside."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

The Key Logical Flaw in the Worship of Science

"Phaedrus' break occurred when, as a result of laboratory experience he became interested in hypotheses as entities in themselves.  He noticed again and again in his lab work that what might seem to be the hardest part of scientific work, thinking up the hypotheses, was invariably the easiest.  The act of formally writing everything down precisely and clearly seemed to suggest them.  As he was testing hypothesis number one by experimental method a flood of other hypotheses would come to mind, and as he was testing these, some more came to mind, and as he was testing these, still more came to mind until it became painfully evident that as he continued testing hypotheses and eliminating or confirming them their number did not decrease.  It actually increased as he went along.

"....It pleased him never to run out of hypotheses....It was only months after...that he began to have some doubts....

"If the purpose of the scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested.  If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive anPd the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge."

Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Phaedrus then begins to study the history of science and confronts the ever shortening 'half life' of scientific truth and he is profoundly shaken - enough so that a promising career as a biochemist came to a crashing halt.  The chapter as a whole is worth reading by anyone who has a serious interest in the philosophy of science. 

MIndfulness vs. Self Consciousness

"All great work - artistic, poetic, intellectual or spiritual - is produced at those moments when its creators are lost completely in their actions, when they forget themselves altogether, and are free from self-consciousness."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

Albert Einstein on the Scientific Method

"The supreme task...is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction.  There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them..."

Quote (and editing) is from:
Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Pirsig's comment on the quote:

"Intuition? Sympathy? Strange words for the origin of scientific knowledge."

Strange words indeed.

Living in the Moment

"Real life is the present moment - not the memories of the past which is dead and gone, nor the dreams of the future which is not yet born.  One who lives in the present moment lives the real life, and he is the happiest."

"This does not mean that you should not think of the past or future at all.  On the contrary, you think of them in relation to the present moment, the present action, when and where it is relevant."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught


I can see the benefits of mindfulness and attention to the present moment, but how empty is a life without the pleasant memories of the past and the excitement of future plans.  I'm certainly not built to be a Buddhist ascetic.

Possibility

I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -

Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of eye -
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky -

Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -


Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 466

A Spiritual Experience

"Again, I call to mind that distant moment in Hermanice when on a hot, cloudless summer day, I sat on a pile of rusty iron and gazed into the crown of an enormous tree that stretched with dignified repose, up and over all fences, wires, bars, and watchtowers that separated me from it.  As I watched the imperceptible trembling of its leaves against an endless sky, I was overcome with a sensation that its difficult to describe: all at once, I seemed to rise above all the coordinates of my momentary existence in the world into a kind of state outside time in which all the beautiful things I had ever seen and experienced existed in a total 'co-present'; I felt a sense of reconciliation, indeed of an almost gentle consent to the inevitable course of things as revealed to me now, and this combined with a carefree determination to face what had to be faced.  A profound amazement at the sovereignty of Being became a dizzying sensation of tumbling endlessly into the abyss of its mystery; an unbounded joy at being alive, at having been given the chance to live through all I had lived through, and at the fact that everything has a deep and obvious meaning - this joy formed a strange alliance in me with a vague horror at the inapprehensibility and unattainability of everything I was so close to in that moment, standing at the very 'edge of the finite'; I was flooded with a sense of ultimate happiness and harmony with the world and myself, with that moment, with all the moments I could call up, and with everything invisible that lies behind it and which has meaning.  I would even say that I was somehow 'struck by love,' though I don't know precisely for whom or what."

Vaclav Havel
Letters From Olga

Hermanice was the second of three prisons in which Havel served out his sentence in communist Czechoslovakia for "subverting the republic."

Anapanasati

"One of the simplest and easiest of practices," this is the concentration on breathing.  My wife and I have been practicing a form of this as part of her therapy for anxiety.  You simply sit up straight and concentrate on your breathing, being aware of each breath in and each breath out, for five or ten minutes, once in the morning, once at night.

"At the beginning you will find it extremely difficult to bring your mind to concentrate on your breathing...After a certain period, you will experience just that split second when your mind is fully concentrated on your breathing, when you will not even hear sounds nearby, when no external world exists for you.  This slight moment is such a tremendous experience for you, full of joy, happiness and tranquility....if you go on practicing you may repeat the experience again and again for longer and longer periods."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

Meditation

"It aims at cleansing the mind of impurities and disturbances, such as lustful desires, hatred, ill-will, indolence, worries and restlessness, skeptical doubts and cultivating such qualities as concentration, awareness, intelligence, will, energy, the analytical faculty, confidence, joy, tranquility, leading finally to the attainment of highest wisdom which sees the nature of things as they are..."

Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught

Half Hidden

A Charm invests a face
Imperfectly beheld -
The Lady dare not lift her Vail
For fear it be dispelled.

But peers beyond her mesh -
And wishes - and denies -
Lest interview - annul a want
That image - satisfies -

Emily Dickinson
The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Franklin), 430