Saturday, April 30, 2011

Essay: Ideas and Values of Robert Pirsig as influenced by Eastern Thought with an emphasis on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

From 2008 to 2011, I was a student at Athabasca University. I thought that it might be of general interest to convert a few of my assignments into blogs. In a Humanities course titled ‘East Meets West’, there was an assignment on this subject:
A systematic analysis of the similarities between the ideas and values of Robert Pirsig and those of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Includes how he was influenced by these varieties of eastern thought with an emphasis on his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance / An Inquiry into Values.
As in all of my assignments, it was a struggle to be both succinct and complete in my writing. The essay that I turned in looked much like this:
Robert Persig was influenced for many years by eastern thought and religion before he sat down to write his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance[1] masterwork.  His background included an extensive education in both philosophy and religious studies.  In Zen’s prefatory Author’s Note he says that the book is not particularly factual about Zen Buddhist practice, and “it’s not very factual on motorcycles either.”  This is a book where the subtitle – An Inquiry into Values – might describe the theme better than the primary title does.
Mr. Persig was also heavily influenced by his studies of Greek philosophers and his personal descent into madness.  His attempt to meld his inner madness into a complete functional human being; reminded me of how various prophets and philosophers have meditated upon the division between body and soul, tried to explain Ying and Yang or attempted to bridge the divide between the current human plane of existence and the unknown future that awaits us after death.
Robert Persig’s Zen is fundamentally about junctures and gaps and how they are bridged.  He is not particularly interested in how a hypothesis is hatched, a plan is started or a destination is reached.  He is very interested in the process and the journey.  He puts relatively little importance on either classical or romantic ways of thinking.  He is very interested how the thinking meshes into a syncretic whole that he labels as Quality.
Though this essay is not intended as a biography or book review, a quick description of the author and his story is required to appreciate the Eastern influences.
Robert Persig was born just over eighty years ago on September 6, 1928 in Minneapolis.[2]  According to his personal story, as related in Zen, he was an exceptionally brilliant child and a gifted student.  As a teenage biochemistry student he was flummoxed when he realized that as classical science proved or disproved a series of hypotheses, each one that was knocked over would lead to an infinite number of new possible hypotheses.  As Alexander Elliot wrote, “man is not a problem solver so much he is a problem maker”.  (Elliot, Alexander "Zen and the art of what?”  p. 129)
Young Persig could not handle that his scientific study was making the world more complex rather than simpler.  What should be the “hardest part of scientific work, thinking up hypotheses, was invariably the easiest”.  As one possible theory was disproved a flood of new possibilities would become manifest.  They increased as he went along.  Phaedrus-Persig soon abandoned his study of chemical science.
This was followed by a stint in the US Army which included a posting in Korea.  There Persig received an introduction to Eastern thought.  He writes about an influential book on Oriental philosophy that he read at this point.  He says that the book compares Western and Eastern components of man’s existence and that these components correspond to classic and romantic modes of reality.[3]
After his return to the United States he rejoined the university system to study philosophy.  To polish his American studies he studied Oriental philosophy at Benares Hindu University in India.  He remained an empirical scientist but he had “been exposed to a lot”. (Persig  p. 141)
After his studies in India, Persig returned to the United States.  He taught rhetorical English at a university in Montana followed by an attempt to get his doctorate by study at the University of Chicago’s Department of Philosophy.  Through all this time he thought on the nature of Quality.  He studied the way that objective and subjective ways of thinking worked together.  He practised the art of motorcycle maintenance.  He also became quite unable to handle the reality of normal society.  In other words he became insane.
In 1960 Persig was finally admitted to a mental institution.  In 1963, he was treated with a series of electroshock procedures.  During these treatments – according to the Zen narrative – Robert Persig became separated from his earlier personality and much of his earlier memories.  He gives the name of Phaedrus to this earlier ‘insane’ personality and writes of himself in the third-person.  In a way Phaedrus can be thought as a previous incarnation of Persig the author.  Eastern religions have much to say about previous and future incarnations.
In July 1968[4] Persig headed out from the city of his birth on a journey to the West.  He started the trip with his motorcycle, his son, a couple of friends and Phaedrus.  During the course of his motorcycle journey, he leaves his friends behind, he does a lot of thinking about Quality, he unites his rational self and his irrational Phaedrus self, and he confronts the fears of his 12 year old son.
This story of this journey might be intended as a reflection of the Toaist journey of discovery to the Western mountains and the Toaist appreciation of nature.  Persig does not explicitly say this though.
In 1874 a type of summer camp for adults was founded on the banks of Chautauqua Lake, New York.  This spawned a series of travelling road shows that combined entertainment and education.  These road shows took place over several days and became known themselves as Chautauquas.  They included lectures presented in a manner and style that would allow the ordinary citizen to understand difficult subjects. [5]  Robert Persig designed his Zen book as a form of Chautauqua meant to both entertain and elucidate.  Elliot points out that in classic Zen practise an artist or performer will follow the concept of a “masterpiece of the past” and then “as with Zen swordsmanship, archery, and tea, the whole point is in the performance itself. In the doing, that is to say, not the product.” (Eliot  p. 126)  A hundred years after that first Chautauqua show, Persig published his own skillful modern version of an entertaining presentation that also provides instruction.
Phaedrus-Persig remained an empirical scientist but he had been exposed to Eastern thought.  “He became aware that the doctrinal differences among Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism.” (Persig  p. 141)  Just a couple paragraphs later, the author says that
The illusion of separation of subject from object is best removed by the elimination of physical activity, mental activity and emotional activity. There are many disciplines for this. One of the most important is the Sanskrit dhyana, mispronounced in Chinese as "Chan" and again mispronounced in Japanese as "Zen."
In other words, the subject and object are just parts of one whole system; their interaction can be studied by contemplation and meditation, and this method of study is known as Zen.  A dictionary[6] definition says that “enlightenment can be attained through meditation, self-contemplation, and intuition rather than through faith and devotion”.  Study and activity (or the lack of such activity) are more important than prayer or faith.
According to R.Z. Sheppard’s review[7] of Zen: “Pirsig is no orthodox Zen Buddhist”. For Persig motorcycle maintenance is the equivalent of a meditative tea ceremony. 
Briefly, motor maintenance requires a good deal of quiet concentration so that the underlying principles of the engine are allowed to fill the gap between the object (engine) and the subject (mechanic). A Zen monk would say that under such conditions, the fixer and the fixed are no longer opposing objects but one reality.
Phaedrus-Pirsig never thought small. His aim was to do nothing less than revamp the whole scientific method that operated from the premise that the observer and what was observed must be separate realities. (Sheppard)
Just as the story has the major theme of Persig melding with his Phaedrus self it has a secondary theme where Persig and his son Chris, “who up to this point have seemed like subject and object, are united by what might be appropriately described as the underlying quality of familial love” (Sheppard).
One of the oriental themes is that Quality matters.  Otherwise one might simply throw things together without caring about the results.
“Those Indians and medieval men were just as intelligent as we are, but the context that they thought was completely different.  Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits are quite as real as atoms, photons and quants are to modern man.” (Persig  pp. 33 - 34) Persig’s own ghost (Phaedrus) was real to him and belonged entirely to him.  To Persig, Phaedrus was something entirely his own.  (In a similar way, everyone has dreams that are entirely different from than those that anyone else has.  Dreams belong only to one person and one self).  Persig had a hard time giving up his personal ghost.
Persig writes about a man dividing a handful of sand into understandable parts. “This and that.  Here and there.  Black and white.  Now and then.  The discrimination is the division of the conscious universe into parts.” (Persig  p. 79) On the next page he explains that Classical understanding is concerned with the piles of sand and the classification of the same.  “Romantic understanding is directed toward the handful of sand before the sorting begins.  … It’s necessary to see that part of the landscape, inseparable from it, which must be understood, is a figure in the middle of it, sorting sand into piles… To reject that part of the Buddha that attends to the analysis of motorcycles is to miss the Buddha entirely.” (Persig  p. 80)
In a later discussion, the author writes about the Japanese state of mu. It is a way of answering a question with something other than yes or no.  He postulates that nature can have states other than the digital on or off.  There is something outside of Ying and Yang and that something is the entire whole or mu. (Persig  p. 327)
The Buddha exists independent of analytical thought but Persig says that the Buddha also “exists within analytic thought, and gives that analytic thought its direction”. (Persig  p. 81)  Persig pursued his personal ghost named Phaedrus; but he also says that Phaedrus spent his entire life pursuing “the ghost that underlies all of technology, all of modern science, all of Western thought. It is the ghost of rationality itself. … whose appearance is that of incoherence and meaninglessness.” (Persig  p. 82)  Being rational is incoherent.  The ultimate purpose of life is an impossible paradox; “one lives longer in order that he may live longer.  There is no other purpose.  That is what the ghost says.” (Persig  p. 82).[8]
The book on the surface seems to be about a physical journey across a physical world.  It is also about a journey to “the high country of the mind” (Persig  p. 125) where one has to become adjusted to the thin air of uncertainty.  The sweep of possible questions and possible answers goes on obviously much further than the mind can grasp.
Persig compares the Zen Buddhist practise of “just sitting,” and the motorcycle maintenance practise of “just fixing”. (Persig  p. 303)  When a person cares about what he is doing he must break out of the separateness between a person and his work.  “Peace of mind produces right values, right values produces right thoughts.  Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.” (Persig  p. 304)
As the book continues, it introduces more and more influence by classic Greek and Western philosophy.  There are discussions of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Thoreau and PoincarĂ©.  Persig finally pulls the East and West into the same philosophical space, “Quality! Virtue! Dharma!” he declares are simply different words for the same concept. (Persig  p. 386)
While studying this book for this essay, I came to realize all the ways that the author was heavily influenced by Buddhism – especially the concepts of the Japanese Zen tradition.  Robert Persig tried to combine Western classical thought and Eastern romanticism.  He tried to meld the art of doing and the state of just being.
I saw little in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that was influenced by Hinduism or classic Confucianism.  I found places where it might have been influenced by Taoistic concepts of a journey through life and the reverence of nature and natural surroundings.  Persig did not directly refer to the teachings of Hinduism, Confucianism or Taoism.  He does write a lot about Greek philosophical concepts.
He showed that the universe is not just Ying / Yang or black / white or good / evil. There is also an overriding Quality, Virtue or Buddha quality that stands outside, and also consists of, the entire whole.  (Some things in this plane of existence are a somewhat difficult for human beings to fully grasp and understand).  He did all this in a Chautauqua that teaches difficult religious and philosophical concepts while entertaining with a good story.

Bibliography and references used in this Essay
Eliot, Alexander  "Zen and the art of what?"
Eastern Buddhist 9.1 (May 1976)
: pp 124-130.
Gregory, Dave  “Unit 2 / Robert Persig’s Quest for Quality”
Humanities 360: East Meets West Study Guide
Athabasca, AB
Lin Yutang. (ed) The Wisdom of China and India
New York, NY: The Modern Library, 1955.
Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
New York, NY: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.
Schuldenfrei  “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
Review of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Originally printed in Harvard Educational Review, vol 45, no 1 February 1975
Sheppard, R.Z. “The Enormous Vrooom”  Time
New York, NY  April 15 1974
Review of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Steiner, George "Uneasy Rider"  The New Yorker
New York, NY  April 15 1974
Review of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Toynbee, Philip  “Voyage of Discovery.”
Review of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Original printed in The Observer no 9561 October 17, 1974.

[1] This book will be referred to from here forward as Zen.
All the Zen references here are to the 2005 edition as detailed in the bibliography.
[2] The general biographic details of Robert Persig’s life are based on the endnotes of the 2005 Zen edition.
[3] Persig says that the book he read was The Meeting of East and West by F. S. C. Persig.  Interestingly enough, he doesn’t mention the subtitle, An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding, which might have influenced Zen’s subtitle: An Inquiry into Values.
[4] Coincidentally, this journey occurred in the summer 40 years ago when Persig was almost exactly half of his current age
[5] Details on the Chautauqua movement are from http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/traveling-culture/essay.htm.
[6] From www.thefreedictionary.com definition of ‘Zen’
[7] Sheppard, R.Z. “The Enormous Vrooom”  Time Magazine
[8]  In Zen religious practice such a paradox, containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, is known as a koan and used as a subject of mediation.

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