Book Byte #249 "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
An Inquiry Into Values
📣 Curious Quotes from the Author
“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
“The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.”
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“You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.”
“We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. ”
“Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive”
“Is it hard?'
Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes that’s hard.”
“In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”
“But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”
“If someone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.”
Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce 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.”
“For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.”
“We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.”
“Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness" is the real reason you find it hard to get started”
📚 Cognition of the Book’s Big Idea
Even if there may seem to be a wide gap between science and the humanities, there is still room for reconciliation. In actuality, overcoming this gap is crucial if we are to comprehend the intricacies of the human condition.
Widen your perspective.
If you consider yourself a "humanities person" and have no idea how simple things operate, such as the plumbing in your sink or the motor in your car, challenge yourself to learn about the mechanics underlying commonplace technologies. But if you're less interested in the humanities and more of a scientist, you might want to read a few poems or keep a self-reflection notebook.
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