This book had been in my read list for a really long time. And when I finally picked it up, I simply had no idea what I had in store. This book is totally not what I expected and I am sure most people will also not gather much of the book just by reading the title.
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was amazing and provides a totally different viewpoint and a rather intellectual and methodological way of looking at things. It has nothing to do with Zen and even less with motorcycle maintenance. It basically say that if you do anything with quality even motorcycle maintenance, then you will lead a quality life and like what you will be doing.
The book is a true story of a person who was declared insane and was given involuntary shock treatment. This resulted in a totally new personality for him, where he just had a dim view and little recollections of his past.
He and his son are traveling on a motorbike (the big Bullet types) along with a couple on another bike. They are just there to see the countryside or the ?real America? and are avoiding the freeways and keeping to the road less traveled. Throughout the book the author refers to his intellectual ramblings as chataquas. In these sessions he looks for deeper meanings and the cause of certain behavior. Later these sessions become deeply philosophical with the introduction of Greek philosophy. But for most of the time it contains the ?thesis? done by him and its corollaries.
The book starts by comparing himself with his friend. And how he himself is inclined to repair his bike himself and how the other person is scared of this and prefers a mechanic. He blames this on the person?s phobia of technology. Later again and again he dissects his viewpoint and each time comes to a new conclusion or a more specific reason in the same domain.
He divides the people into 2 kinds (he does a lot of such divisions and calls himself the master of such divisions.) romantic and classic. He then goes on to describe each sort with his example. I will not go into details here as the author has done a brilliant job and I simply cannot repeat it in my own words and I also wish that people should read this work.
The major part of the book is devoted to the word ?Quality?. What is ?Quality?? How does one define quality? The author then goes on to explain his search in this field. And how as a teacher he extracted the answers from his students. And the experiments he conducted for this pursuit. He reasons that quality is everything and all perception stems from it. And quality is above mind and matter. He goes on to say that mind and matter stem from quality.
He is so fascinated by this new discovery that he decides to join another university where he can pursue this field with more knowledge. There he accounts his experiences and anecdotes of people he went with. Here he is introduced to Greek Philosophy. And he realizes the impact of it in the modern society. He then reduced it all to ?Mythos and Logos?. Where he says that all the society today is the result of various cultures and work done in the past of their cultures. He also compares and contrasts the ?Good? of Plato with his own ?Quality? and finds that both of them are essentially speaking of the same thing.
The author keeps talking of the memories of himself before the shock therapy in third person and refers to him as Pheadrus. His chataquas are mainly about his memories of these days. And how he suddenly remembers something new.
I would suggest all to read this one. It contains high reason and philosophy and forms a great source of food for thought. In this book the author has given insights and glimpses of the beliefs of the major schools of thought. He has also studied Indian culture and keeps referring to them.
But keep in mind, this book is a difficult read and it took me 2 reads to understand it. But in the end it was well worth the effort.