My journey with ZaMM

I first read Zen and Art of Motocycle Maintenance in the 70s as a motorcycling book. One of the most vivid immediate thoughts on ZaMM was wondering why it had Zen in the title. It struck me at the time – and I still think this – that Zen is a long way from central to Pirsig’s thesis. I resonated entirely with the Narrator / Pirsig coming from the perspective of a committed Christian Theology graduate. Of course calling it Christianity and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance would have ensured a very limited readership. Zen is socially acceptable religion!

That meant that at one level my response was “what’s the big deal – I have always lived like that”. I remember a conversation before reading ZaMM with another owner of a Triumph 500 about what to do when it breaks down (note the ‘when’ here; not if!!). He said “You pull over. Get off the bike. Have a cigarette and don’t even think about the bike, forget about whatever it was you were going to do which you are now going to miss … then get on with sorting out the bike.” I recognized immediately that this was a meditative preparation for engaging with the sacred act of repair. It is very functional when analysed: if you leap off and immediately launch into trying to sort the problem you are likely to get things wrong; and also burn yourself because everything will be incredibly hot. This was how I worked anyway; but in this insight it became explicit. I was then able to know at an intellectual level that this is how I must work to be effective. If I am at home therefore a mug of tea (I am British!) always accompanies me into the workshop as I start work on the bike.

Alongside this sense he was “statin’ the bleedin’ obvious” (at least to me) there was also a sense in that first reading that there was something profound and enticing in what Pirsig was saying; insights which hovered just out of full comprehension.

It is this which means that for me ZaMM is definitely  a sacred text. I keep returning to it and I have no idea how many times I have read it over the past 40+ years. Each time it reveals something different. In recent years the internet has provided new ways of engaging with ZaMM. The Audio Book on YouTube was a twofold new way of engaging. Hearing it read instead of me reading is a different experience. Hearing it with an American accent gave it a new dimension; obviously far more authentically Pirsig than the Northern English which is my own accent. Using Google maps to follow the route – and for some sections using street view – opened up further understanding.

My initial feeling that Pirsig had some really profound gems embedded in the book that were just outside my intellectual reach remained. The result of that of course was a desire to return to the book to see what new insights were opened by reading it. Working through your Quality Existence commentary on ZaMM opened up further understanding and also linked me to others who were thinking in terms of ZaMM as sacred text.

I read Lila for the first only time in 2019 as a result of your channel. I found it deeply disappointing. My impression of it was that it was simply ZaMM II; a sequel with as much success as most Hollywood sequels: a rehash of a successful film to produce a mediocre film. I have zero knowledge of, or interest in, boats and sailing; so that element left me cold. I found the Pirsig character in this novel a combination of sordid and pretentious. I could not work out why he would want to write this as a first person narrative when (to my understanding) it is not autobiographical at all. He was writing Lila in full knowledge that ZaMM had become an international phenomenon. He was presumably quite wealthy off the royalties; yet here he presents himself shagging a rather unstable ‘floozy’ he had picked up in a bar. Why present first person behviour which to me lacked wisdom on many levels - was he working out something in his own psyche here? I felt this sat in uncomfortable contrast with the narrator of ZaMM (essentially autobiographical) who I found attractive and someone I could respect. In ZaMM we are presented with an obscure man struggling with a very ordinary life, knowing he had been a genius; and in the immediate context of the book coping with his son on an adult motorcycle trip. I obviously need to read Lila again as others have found it to be a substantial book.

More recent ideas feeding into Pirsig from Vervaeke and others have given me the insight that Pirsig is Prophet rather than a Philosopher in the Western Tradition. This I found very helpful. I have always been frustrated by the sense that if Pirsig really did have something profound to say he should have written a philosophy book not a couple of novels. I spent 22 years teaching Philosophy A Level (English exams students take at 18 for their university entrance). I was well used to Philosophical texts having taught courses on some classics like Plato The Republic, Descartes Meditations, Hume Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. This I now see as missing the point. Pirsig was a prophet not an analytic philosopher. There are I think possible parallels in this with Nietzsche. For a few years I taught Beyond Good and Evil. I gave up as there was a profound irony in teaching a text which starts with the concept of Western Philosophy being no more than prejudices; and then examining the students’ knowledge using that traditional philosophical method which the text itself  ripped the foundations from. Nietzsche is far more prophet than Western Philosopher.

I suspect if Pirsig had written a standard philosophy book it would now be consigned to history; read by a few in the 70s and forgotten. Because he wrote a novel, which has become a sacred text, he has opened up the understanding of millions who are probably taking in Pirsig’s ideas subliminally rather than at the intellectual level.

Reading Anthony McWatt’s PhD Thesis A Critical Analysis of Robert Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality leads me to think that Pirsig puts in a framework of ideas; but leaves it to others to fill in the gaps. It is a book to launch a life of questions and developing practices; not a book to deliver answers. I therefore see the main role for Pirsig as Prophet who can open up the thinking of his readers and stimulate them to follow up on what they have encountered in his books and then hopefully lead them to find ways of finding a meaningful life.