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Robert Pirsig - World-Renowned Industry Leader
Robert Pirsig Quick Facts
Main Areas: Spirituality; Metaphysics; Zen BuddhismBest Sellers: “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
Career Focus: Author
Robert M. Pirsig is the author of the best-selling book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It is an autobiographical novel, detailing a cross-country motorcycle trip by a man with his 11-year-old son, as well as his quest for truth. Pirsig says the study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a study of the art of rationality itself.
Pirsig was born in Minneapolis and studied chemistry, philosophy, and journalism at the University of Minnesota. He also attended Benares Hindu University in India, where he studied Oriental philosophy. Pirsig says the idea for the book was first conceived in 1968 as a short and lighthearted essay, following a motorcycle trip with his son and two friends.
In his other work, LILA: An Inquiry into Morals, Pirsig offers another lengthy investigation on how we can live well. The Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ) is explained in both of Pirsig’s books. It is a philosophy and a theory about reality. The MOQ asks questions like “What is real?”, “What is good?”, and “What is moral?” and comes up with surprising conclusions about our lives and existence.
Other Programs & Highlights
Much of the MOQ has to do with a nonintellectual Zen-like view of the universe. Pirsig departs from Eastern thinking by arguing that reason and logic are important in seeking understanding. For more on the Metaphysics of Quality, visit www.moq.org.
Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Robert Pirsig
• Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon.
• The cycle you’re working on is a cycle called “yourself.”
• Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu and no food.
• The solutions all are simple—after you have arrived at them. But they’re simple only when you know already what they are.
Getting Started With Robert Pirsig
The best way to get started with Robert M. Pirsig is to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The first chapter sets up the scene for the motorcycle journey that he and his 11-year-old son embark on:
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. 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. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on; it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
This book can best be described as “a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. The narrator's relationship with his son leads to a powerful self-reckoning; the craft of motorcycle maintenance leads to an austerely beautiful process for reconciling science, religion, and humanism.”
In the preface to his book, Pirsig notes that it “should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhism.” He goes on to add that “it’s not very factual on motorcycles, either.”
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has sold millions of copies and has profoundly affected many people. The book, first published in 1974, continues to be a major source of debate and inquiry for its many readers. An ongoing discussion of the meaning of Pirsig’s writings and philosophy can be found on the web at www.moq.org.
