Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig

 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values 

By Robert M. Pirsig 

Preview 

Zen Buddhism and Motorcycle Maintenance–two more unrelated topics could not be paired together! The author Robert M. Pirsig instructs us, however, that the title is misleading. The book, in his words, "should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either." Instead, it is a fictional autobiography that explores the rather abstract concept of the metaphysics of Quality. The book is now a classic, having sold millions of copies worldwide. It has become a highly recommended text for high school students. The author describes a 17-day fictitious motorcycle journey from Minnesota to Northern California along with his son Chris and his friends, the Sutherland couple.  

About the Author 

The author, Robert Maynard Pirsig (1928-2017) was an American writer and philosopher as well as a professor of creative writing. The follow-up book to this philosophical treatise Lila: An Inquiry into Morals (1991) did not gather as much critical acclaim as Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (1974).  

The big idea: Discover the enlightening philosophy of the 'Chautauquas'.  

Though the book is inspired by a real-life motorcycle journey which Pirsig took with his son, the narrated account bears little resemblance to actual events. The backdrop of the motorcycle journey functions only as a medium to convey the author’s philosophical thought to readers. The numerous philosophical discussions referred to as Chautauquas by the author, span over a variety of topics including logic, ethical emotivism, the philosophy of science, and the principle of Quality.  

These Chautauquas are capsules of philosophical wisdom retaining their intriguing aspect despite the obvious didacticism. The discussions revolve around an account of the narrator's past self, who is referred to in the third person as Phaedrus, an interlocutor drawn from Plato's dialogues. 

In this book you will discover: 

• A renewed perspective concerning the age-old conflict between the Classical and the Romantic outlooks. 

• About the inadequacy of science to arrive at irrefutable truths. 

• An insightful philosophical exploration of the abstract concept of ‘Quality’. 

• The need for a balanced life promoting a peaceful being. 

• 
  

The Philosophical Odyssey 

The narrator embarks on to a motorbike journey with his son and a married couple, the Sutherlands, across the American central plains from Minneapolis to Montana. The journey involves deep philosophical discussions called the Chautauquas. 

 The narrator and his friends exhibit distinct personalities. The former is intrigued by the couple's shared aversion towards technology despite its immense significance in their lives. He considers this intense dislike a "disharmony" in their nature. 

 John, as well as his wife Sylvia, is reluctant to learn how to repair their motorbikes. This reluctance is despite their requirement of this skill to survive the journey that they have embarked upon. From this inexplicable behaviour, the narrator surmises that the couple is distressed by technology which embodies for them the mechanistic tendencies of human beings. In retaliation, the couple wishes to rebel against the system and sustain the artistic temperament of the world.  

The narrator deems this a self-defeating stance emerging from a deeply flawed bias as he believes that technology is an art form itself. In stark contrast to the couple, he relies on his rational skills to maintain his relatively older motorcycle. 

The Classical versus the Romantic 

During the journey, the riders face a strong storm, and are forced to take refuge inside a motel. The narrator surprises his companions by being able to guide them to the best hotel in town while apparently visiting for the first time. In one of the Chautauquas sessions, the narrator introduces his companions to "Phaedrus", whose ideas have profoundly influenced his philosophical thought. 

Phaedrus believed that scientific laws are no more reasonable than a supernatural belief in ghosts; both are mere figments of the human imagination. Further, he believed that the human mind consists of two dichotomous states–the classical and the romantic. Accordingly, the narrator is of the classical bent of mind, whereas his road trip companions John and Sylvia Sutherland, are driven by the romantic mode of thinking. In general, the romantics privilege the emotional, inspirational, creative, imaginative, and intuitive means of being.  

They perceive aspects of the classical model as weak. They consider human experience as neither predictable nor controllable; instead, life for them embodies chaos and emotion, the very forces that classical thinkers struggle to ignore or attempt to control. This vast gulf of difference in opinion becomes a source of friction between the narrator and his friends. The couple is romantic in their outlook while the narrator follows the classical lifestyle of Phaedrus. 

Phaedrus 

As the journey progresses the narrator reveals further details about Phaedrus, his biographical background, his crazed hunt for reason and rationality, and his "knife." Phaedrus used logic as a "knife" to dissect the world around him into fine parts that he could analyze. This means that he used logic and observation-driven classification to discern his environment. Phaedrus further believed in the supremacy of reason and rationality to explain the world. He was a brilliant person with an I.Q. of 170, but otherwise very isolated from other humans. His obsessive infatuation with the pursuit of reason was motivated by a belief that reason can aid thoughtful examination of the self. However, he understood that a higher life characterized by true liberation would only be possible by an assimilation of the rational classical, and the intuitive romantic outlooks. 

 Eventually, the narrator acknowledges that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and Phaedrus was his past identity. That personality was destroyed by a court ordered treatment of electroconvulsive therapy. The therapy awakened the narrator's present self, but he retains influences of his past being as Phaedrus. 

Logic, Hypotheses, and the Scientific Method 

The narrator in a Chautauqua session at Yellowstone Valley starts the discussion on the foundations of logic. Logic belongs to two categories: inductive and deductive. Inductive logic extrapolates a set of observations as a general truth. On the other hand, deductive logic uses general laws to arrive at conclusions in particular situations.  

The scientific method involves a disciplined interweaving of induction and deduction. The primary goal of scientific reasoning is the removal of any commonly mistaken preconceptions. An important yet ignored step of the process is the development of a hypothesis.  

The narrator is frightened into a rapidly growing awareness of Phaedrus's history. He remembers that Phaedrus had completed a year of studying biochemistry at the university by the age of 15. He had become fascinated by the formulation of hypotheses and argued that there are infinite possible hypotheses to explain any phenomenon. This idea discredited the long-standing belief that scientific method could be a route to an irrefutable truth. He soon became disenchanted with his academic pursuits and was expelled out of the University at the age of 17. After this, he enlisted in the military and went to Korea. After his return from a foreign land and new culture, he re-embarked on his search for a universal truth. He enrolled in the university to study philosophy, considering it a higher discipline capable of revealing truths that scientific reasoning cannot. 

 

The Life of Phaedrus 

When the party reaches Bozeman, the narrator suggests visiting an abstract painter who is also a college teacher named Robert DeWeese. The latter was a friend of Phaedrus, and the narrator feels discomfort at the possibility that Robert will expect him to be the same person as before. Nonetheless, they still visit him, and the narrator reveals the biographical history and philosophical pursuits of Phaedrus in greater detail.  

Having completed his time at the University, Phaedrus had gone to study Oriental philosophy in India. However, he continued to subscribe to reason and logic and therefore had difficulty in reconciling himself to philosophy. His conflict with a teacher on the question of reality versus illusion fuelled his decision to return to the United States. There he began work as a journalist, got married and had two kids. His attempts to abandon his unhealthy and obsessive pursuits in order to live a healthy life were thwarted as his troubles were revived once he moved to Bozeman. He became friends with DeWeese and respected him for his opposite philosophy. The two had a habit of reacting to events in bafflingly contradictory ways, and their perspective made each other think that the other had mastered a particular type of knowledge.   

In Bozeman, the party splits, and the couple leaves the father and son duo to undertake the journey further. The narrator overcomes his nervousness and returns to Phaedrus's college in Bozeman where strange events begin to unfold. As he searches through the building, an uncomfortable feeling haunts them. His mind is soon overwhelmed with memories of Phaedrus who was driven to insanity by his monomaniacal pursuit of the true meaning of Quality.  

The narrator soon finds himself treading the same path. He comes across Phaedrus's old classroom and meets a woman who refers to him as Phaedrus and treats him with immense respect. The conversation makes narrator uncomfortable, and it ends soon. The narrator comes across Phaedrus' old office and is flooded with memories of his philosophical breakthroughs. He also starts to remember his obsession with Quality. After leaving the college campus, the narrator goes on a hike with his son but soon finds himself obsessing over the actual meaning of Quality. 

The Indefinable Universal–Quality 

Phaedrus used his classroom as a temple of discussions on his thesis of Quality. During his lectures on rhetoric, he undertook innovative and unorthodox teaching methods to develop his students' interest and to unravel his confusions regarding the metaphysics of Quality.  

After several failed attempts to define the term, he undertakes an experiment to reveal the universal and instinctive nature of Quality. Without a distinct definition as the parameter of judgement, his students concur in their evaluations of the degree of quality of their assignments. Thus, he successfully indicates to them that Quality can only be innately perceived as it evades all attempts at rational definition. Even as his decision to abolish graded assignments for a term perplexes students, it makes the quality of their work significantly better. 

On the hike, the narrator starts to draw parallels between his trek and Phaedrus's journey to decipher Quality. He divides Phaedrus's thought on Quality into two phases–first when he refuses to establish a definition of the term, and second when he works on a structure to explain Quality's relationship to the universe. This second pursuit was the one that drove him to insanity.  

According to Phaedrus, Quality is a theory of reality that reconciles the divide between the classical and the romantic mindset. After his deep thinking, Phaedrus arrived at the tripartite model of reality wherein Quality is neither subjective nor objective, but together, they form the Trinity constituting the world–the fundamental stimulating force behind everything in the universe. He becomes very excited about his tripartite model of reality which suggests that Quality is that which unites what one is (subjectivity) to what one perceives in the world (objectivity).  

Some people view the world differently because they approach it with different experiences. Thus, a single experience of fixing a motorbike had assumed differing connotations for the narrator and the Sutherlands. His conception of Quality is an absolute monism in itself. The narrator later realizes that "Quality is the Buddha," "Quality is scientific reality," and "Quality is the goal of Art", and they come together in the art of motorcycle maintenance. 

Evading the ‘Gumption Traps’ 

"Gumption" is something which motivates an individual to perform "Quality" tasks like fixing a motorbike. It can be drained by ‘gumption traps, ' and thus an individual loses motivation and ability to perform quality work. The two broad categories of gumption traps are 'setbacks', which come from external circumstances, and 'hang-ups' which come from within individuals themselves.  

The hang-ups are divided into three categories which include ‘truth traps’ blocking intellectual comprehension, ‘muscle traps’ blocking physical actions, and ‘value traps’ which affect the innate understanding. There are other gumption traps like ‘ego traps,' ‘anxiety traps,' and ‘psychomotor traps.' These traps can be overcome by pausing and developing a genuine interest in and a new perspective towards a work like repairing the motorcycle. 

Finding the Balance 

Wishing to explore his thesis on Quality further, Phaedrus joined the Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago. However, he soon found himself at odds with the program chairman on his ideas of philosophy. The chairman subscribed to Aristotelian ideas and wanted his students to follow them too, while Phaedrus's thesis on Quality yielded anti-Aristotelian conclusions.  

 

Phaedrus had no scholarship and supported himself by teaching rhetoric to students. He also read Aristotle extensively and found his ideas even more disagreeable. He began to overexert himself physically in his academic pursuits which resulted in his deteriorating health. His debates with the chairman became more explosive, causing increasing tension between them. Amidst mounting pressure and failing health, he started to lose his grip on reality, becoming mentally unstable. The closer he came to a real understanding of philosophy, the more distant he became from sanity. Eventually, he had to be admitted to a hospital where he was treated with electrotherapy to get cured. 

As the journey approaches its end, the narrator begins to achieve a greater awareness of his schizophrenic personality as himself and Phaedrus. As he gains touch with himself, he starts to become more silent and thoughtful, talking less and less about philosophy to which his son had earlier complained. He realizes that his actions in his obsessive pursuit, had adversely influenced his family and resulted in a strained relationship between him and his son. He starts to realize the meaning of Zen and balance in his life. After that, he vows to be there for his family and strictly adhere to the path leading to "peace of mind."  

Final summary 

We hope you enjoyed this quid on Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. The author in this fictitious journey explores the metaphysical explanation of many scientific questions which trouble him.  

The central theme of this book explores the meaning and concept of Quality. The other ideas which the narrator struggles with, are the limitations of scientific reason, and the clash between the classical and the romantic ways of thinking. 

 Eventually, the narrator concludes that in order to experience Quality, one must embrace both the ways of life as per the requirements of the situation. Whether motorcycle maintenance is regarded as dull and tedious drudgery, or an enjoyable and pleasurable pastime, is entirely dependent on the attitude of a person.