Thursday, June 23, 2005

Zen and the Art ..

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After a while he says, "Do you believe in ghosts?"

"No," I say

"Why not?"

"Because they are un-sci-en-ti-fic."

The way I say this makes John smile. "They contain no matter," I continue, "and have no energy and therefore, according to the laws of science, do not exist except in people's minds."

The whiskey, the fatigue and the wind in the trees start mixing in my mind. "Of course," I add, "the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people's minds. It's best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you're safe. That doesn't leave you very much to believe in, but that's scientific too."

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Blind alley, though. If somone's ungrateful and you tell him he's ungrateful, okay, you've called him a name. You haven't solved anything.
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But over the miles, and I think most cyclists will agree with this, you pick up certain feelings about an individual machine that are unique for that one individual machine and no other. A friend who owns a cycle of the same make, model and even same year brought it over for repair, and when I test rode it afterward it was hard to believe it had come from the same factory years ago. You could see that long ago it had settled into its own kind of feel and ride and sound, completely different from mine. No worse, but different.
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Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

2 Comments:

Blogger Advaitavedanti said...

Zen and the Art... is one heck of a book. And perhaps, one of the only books that has nothing to do with Zen, nothing to do with Motorcycle maitenance and still carries the perfect title! :)

Cheers.

9:31 PM  
Blogger Vishal Sah said...

Thats true.


I always wonder if a catchy name is the key to success for organizations / cults / products.

'Zen' name is so cool. Can you imagine the title - " Theravada and the art of ... "

1:55 AM  

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