- Robert J. Pirsig and his Son (1968) - ww2.usca.edu
Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance follows the physical and spiritual journey of a writer of technical manuals who is travelling by motorcycle across mid-western America with his young son. During the journey, the narrator revisits his past in which his former self, whom he refers to as Phaedrus, suffered a mental breakdown and underwent electroconvulsive therapy, with the result that the narrator has almost complete amnesia of his former life. As they travel across America, the narrator contemplates the nature of existence and gradually works towards remembering and coming to terms with his past.
What is Good?
Robert Pirsig begins Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with an epigram that highlights the central concern of the novel: “And what is good, Phaedrus, / And what is not good— / Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?” For Phaedrus, the narrator’s pre-breakdown self, this concept leads him on an intense quest for the meaning of Quality, which ultimately ends in his mental breakdown.
Eastern religions or religious philosophies can also be said to express concern with identifying what is good and what is not good, in terms of how human beings interact with the physical and spiritual worlds around them. Although the religion that Pirsig’s novel ostensibly explores is Zen Buddhism, a number of concepts from traditional Buddhism, philosophical Taoism, and Hinduism also appear in the novel and are important not only to the theory of Quality that almost destroys Phaedrus, but also to how the post-breakdown narrator carries out his quest for self-discovery.
The Theory of Quality
Phaedrus first begins his quest to define Quality when a colleague at asks, “‘Are you really teaching Quality this quarter?’” This casual statement prompts Phaedrus to wonder if quality actually exists. He gradually becomes obsessed with understanding the nature of "Quality," which leads him to the conclusion that Quality is the source of all subjects and objects, that “at the moment of pure Quality, there is no subject and there is no object. There is only a sense of Quality that produces a later awareness of subjects and objects.” In other words, the answer to the question, “What is good?”, comes not from our own subjective perception of an object, but is generated before intellectualization takes place from what Phaedrus calls a “preintellectual reality."
Phaedrus connects this definition of Quality with the Tao identified in Laotse’s Book of Tao: “What he had been talking about all the time as Quality was here the Tao, the great central generating force of all religions.” Before his breakdown, Phaedrus makes a final connection between his theory of Quality, the ancient Greek concept of virtue, and the Hindu concept of dharma, or “duty toward self”: Quality! Virtue! Dharma!...Before the Church of Reason. Before substance. Before form. Before mind and matter. Before dialectic itself. Quality had been absolute.” For Phaedrus, this final connection is overwhelming and he becomes ever more consumed by his quest for the truth about Quality.
Enlightenment
This obsession with Quality finally causes Phaedrus to suffer a breakdown that parallels the Hindu and Buddhist enlightening experiences. In Hinduism, moksha is the ultimate spiritual goal of the disciple, representing the end of the cycle of reincarnation and characterized as an anonymous, impersonal, blissful state. The ultimate goal in Buddhism, which also represents a release from the cycle of deaths and rebirths, is Nirvana, which the Buddha describes the end of “the thinking-mind with all its discriminations, attachments, aversions and egoism.” Both experiences suggest a kind of death of the Self, where the Hindu disciple recognizes that the individual self or soul is one with brahman, the world soul, and the Buddhist disciple lets go of any notion of Self entirely.
In Pirsig’s novel, Phaedrus undergoes this death of Self when his consciousness begins to come apart: “He crosses the lonesome valley, out of the mythos, and emerges as if from a dream, seeing that his whole consciousness, the mythos, has been a dream….Then even ‘he’ disappears and only the dream of himself remains with himself in it.” Whereas the Buddha was ready to experience his Enlightenment—according to tradition, he spent forty-nine days lost in rapture—Phaedrus experiences a break with reality and he is placed in a mental hospital in Chicago where he undergoes the electroconvulsive therapy that destroys most of his memory.
Perceiving Quality
Although Phaedrus was able to finally understand the meaning of Quality, he could not perceive it in the world around him because of the disharmony in his physical and spiritual life. In contrast, the narrator works towards experiencing Quality by practicing wu wei, or action without motivation, as described by the philosophical Taoists (see Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for more information on the Buddhist and Taoists concepts in the novel). Not only are physical and mental quietness required, but also value quietness, “in which one has no wandering desires at all but simply performs the acts of his life without desire." The key, then, to perceiving Quality “is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind, so that goodness can shine through.”
As the epigram of the novel highlights, Phaedrus must examine his own experiences to find the answer to the question, “What is good?”, and the answer he discovers in the novel is not just in the theory of Quality he develops, but also in his new appreciation of inner peace and being in harmony with the world around him. In the end, Phaedrus achieves a kind of rebirth, a second chance to share his ideas and to restore his relationship with his son. He ultimately realizes that Quality cannot be wholly defined by a theory, but must be lived and felt.
References
- Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. 1974. New York: Perennial Classics, 2000.
- Ross, Nancy Wilson. Three Ways of Asian Wisdom: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zen and Their Significance for the West. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.
- Yutang, Lin, ed. The Wisdom of China and India. New York: Random House, 1942.
Jennifer McNeil Bertrand - Jennifer McNeil Bertrand is an association professional with a background in English Literature and Communications.
