"...the art of the work is just as dependent upon your own mind and spirit as it is upon the material of the machine. That's why you need the peace of mind."
"Actually, this idea isn't so strange," I continue. "Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you'll see the difference. The craftsman isn't ever following a single line of instruction. He's making decisions as he goes along. For that reason he'll be absorbed and attentive to what he's doing even though he doesn't deliberately contrive this. His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony. He isn't following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are changing together in a progression of changes until his mind's at rest at the same time the material's right."
"Sounds like art," the instructor says.
"Well, it is art," I say. "This divorce of art from technology is completely unnatural."
Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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