Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend One of the most important and influential books written in the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live . . . and a breathtaking meditation on how to live better. Here is the book that transformed a generation: an unforgettable narration of a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest, undertaken by a father and his young son. A story of love and fear -- of growth, discovery, and acceptance… Product details and pricing info |
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529 Customer Reviews Posted
- Quality without six sigma
- I have probably purchased over 25 copies if Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for friends, family and customers. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM) is about finding quality through "being the job" instead of 25 pages of process documentation for a 55 second operation.
Implied in this is identifying yourself with the job and finding satisfaction in a job well done. Being the job. - 2007-08-24, 3 of 4 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Like it
- I love it that I can find used books at a great price, fair shipping price, plus they show up in a timely manner in wonderful shape! Thanks!
- 2007-07-28, 3 of 10 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Thought provoking!
- The book is based on true accounts experienced by the author. The book doesn't really talk about Zen, but is more based on Western Philosophy. The author writes, "What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it 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."
The book is about the author's cross-country motorcycle trip with his 8 year old son Chris, which leads to a journey of self-discovery. It is an examination of the spiritual relationship between a parent and a child, and man's search for reason. During this journey, the author teaches us about life and the human condition in a profound and thought-provoking way. It is a terrific book about philosophy and life, albeit a difficult read. After reading this book, you might reevaluate the way you live, go on a personal quest for the meaning of life, and be interested in reading more books on philosophy. In my case, the book made me want to read more about Kant and Hume, and review some of the books I read before on Plato and Aristotle.
Some of the deep philosophical questions and conundrums raised by the author are:
(a) Before Newton discovered The Law of Gravity, was there gravity? Did gravity exist before Newton or is it the thought of Gravity that suddenly manifested the Law of Gravity? Is it the thought of something that suddenly creates it?
(b) The Arabs and Indians used the `zero' before the Romans and Greeks. Why did the Greeks not invent the zero? How did their societies function for so long without the zero? Could it have continued without the discovery of `zero'? Was the `zero' always there regardless of whether it was discovered or not?
(c) All arguments, solutions, and scientific `truths' have already been invented. We simply discover the best solution.
(d) How do we define the "present" when everything we're conscious of has already happened, and is already a part of the past?
(e) Which self is the real you?
(f) What is good and what is bad? The book opens with the following quote:
"And what is good, Phaedrus,
and what is not good--
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"
(g) "Astronomers would be telling mankind that if he looked long enough through a telescope powerful enough, what he would see is the back of his own head."
(h) In life there is no grade, no pass or fail.
(i) "Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality."
(j) "Religion wasn't invented by man. Man was invented by religion." [No idea who invented women, hihihihihi]
(k) How can something can be exclusively "material," when our reality is exclusively spiritual
(l) We should remain open to the part of the world that is beyond appearances, beyond the so-called matter, and cannot be experienced but only imagined.
(m) How do you deal with technology and remain sane?
(n) Man searches for something that he can't quite define, identify or reach.
Plato and Aristotle, the author argues, conceived a system of thought in which beauty is severed from functionality. Functionality became less attractive to us than beauty. Plato and Aristotle, according to the author, committed a murderous act by this system of thought that is still carried out till today. "Quality" has thus been victimized.
The author went insane as a graduate student as he searched for the answer to "what is quality?", and spent considerable time at the asylum. He was subjected to shock treatments that wiped out his personality and most of his memory. He later realized that he was not really insane, but thought in a different level than most people.
Pirsig sees the problems in our world as the result of an overemphasis on beauty, when functionality is more essential. One reviewer puts it nicely, "...pure `function' has problems of its own. For example, our bodily organs carry out the function of allowing us to live, but one doesn't really desire for our skin to be translucent so we can watch these functions. In fact, we would have a revulsion to such a thing. Therefore, we have a combination of both "form" [beauty] and "function"; our organs work very well without our having to see them. This is the desirable state. This desirable state is called `Quality'."
However, `Quality' is indefinable. It comes before thought, and before actions. Any attempt at describing it is useless, because as soon as you attempt to, you are only talking about one aspect of it.
This is one of those books that you either both understand and enjoy or you don't. It is really all about timing, your past experiences and knowledge, and your reasons for reading this book in the first place. If you don't understand it put it down and wait until the time is right. Don't throw it away!
Read this book slowly if you really want to understand it. If you like to read thought provoking and intellectually challenging books, you will love it!
To close, one reviewer wrote, "Many of the negative reviews are from people who had a preconceived notion of what this book was before they read it (either from the title or from a recommendation) and were upset that it didn't meet their expectations. It seems to me that these folks have received their Zen lesson..." - 2007-07-26, 10 of 13 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- A book to read over and over and over again
- When I was a kid, I'm sure that I read some of the Star Trek books several times -- The Making of Star Trek, the original novel Spock Must Die by James Blish, to name two.
As an adult, one of the books I come back to again and again is Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This book is quite unique. It is a narrative about a father and son taking a motorcycle trip circa 1968. A real trip. You can even see pictures taken on the trip on the web, so now a reader can see the actual characters in the story. I don't know if the story was altered much to fit the design that Pirsig intended, but the trip serves as a metaphor for a rambling lecture on the nature of reality itself and our interaction with it.
It is a metaphysics book. The motorcycle trip narrative is interspersed with talk of Greek philosophy, calculus, Poincaré, Pirsig's own descent into madness and return to a brittle sanity, flashbacks to Pirsig's years as a student and a teacher, and his musings on the concept of "quality." Loosely speaking the viewpoint is Buddhist, though Pirsig's metaphysics is really his own creation. I suppose one might say that he attacks a purely mechanistic view, that this way actually leads to madness. He demonstrates that there is at least one logical flaw in the scientific method, and shows why following that method slavishly cannot lead to solid, certain truth.
It is very heady stuff. Not having a photographic memory, it does not stay in my mind. One can reread and marvel at the revelation of one subject after another, pulling it into his lecture (or "Chautauqua" of the mind as he calls it) about reality and quality. As the voyagers ascend the Rocky Mountains, he gets more and more abstract. In the high rockies they stop for a while, look around, rest, and then they head down to the west coast and sea level, where he tries to bring the discussion into a more down to earth, everyday realm. What does this mean for living on a day to day basis?
If you are a Christian, you might wonder, how does a Buddhist book apply to me? Why should I even read this? While Pirsig aims for a combination of intuition (feeling) and experimentation, the Christian must rely on the Holy Spirit for revelation, and the Scriptures for grounding. That is for his moral life. But for everyday things like... oh, fixing a motorcycle, for example, there is not a moral or immoral way to fix it. There is a right way and wrong way. There are effective ways and on the other side there is failure. Here is where Pirsig might be more practical, for everyone. And as another reviewer pointed out below, this book might be more social commentary than philosophy anyway.
Mostly though, the book is an intellectual thrill ride, a roller coaster for the brain. People ride roller coasters again and again. Or jump out of airplanes. Or climb mountains. This is a mountain climbing book -- where physical and philosophical and scientific mountains are scaled, and then you come back down, exhilarated and exhausted. And then you say, "We gotta do that again sometime!" - 2007-07-04, 3 of 3 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Maintain your sanity by not reading this book
- A philosophy textbook hidden by a disquise of a motorcycle maintenance manual. I know nothing of motorcycle maintenance but I thought that this would be an interesting way to learn a little about it and how that simple act could relate to my life. I was quite wrong. Pirsig does discuss the various fixes he uses on his bike along his journey. Don't get fooled. He uses these side trips only to advance his main topic of philosphic confusion and insanity. If you are a student of philosphy or quality then by all means enjoy, but all others steer clear.
- 2007-06-29, 4 of 23 people found this review helpful, Rated:
