Robert M. Pirsig
Robert M. Pirsig
Robert Maynard Pirsigis an American writer and philosopher, and the author of the philosophical novels Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Valuesand Lila: An Inquiry into Morals...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth6 September 1928
CountryUnited States of America
understanding littles zen-motorcycle-maintenance
There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.
passion understanding mind
Analytic and romantic understanding should be united at a basic level. Reassimilate the passions from which the rational mind fled.
dream men understanding
Now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth...but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.
understanding inner-peace mind
This inner peace of mind occurs on three levels of understanding. Physical quietness seems the easiest to achieve, although there are levels and levels of this too, as attested by the ability of Hindu mystics to live buried alive for many days. Mental quietness, in which one has no wandering thoughts at all, seems more difficult, but can be achieved. But value quietness, in which one has no wandering desires at all but simply performs the acts of his life without desire, that seems the hardest.
understanding quality knows
Quality... you know what it is, yet you don't know what it is.
real understanding predecessors
Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the physic predecessor of all real understanding.
acceptance keys understanding
An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality.
arrived simple solutions
The solutions all are simple -- after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.
people
People are all at sixes and sevens with each other. They're always quarreling. They never somehow resolve anything.
produces
It's the dualistic ways of looking at things that produces the evil.
buddha circuits computer cycle gears resides
The Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain.
people until
Up until my first book was published, I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say: 'No, I didn't screw up.'
authors everybody famous
I did not want to write one of those sequels that famous first-book authors get into where everybody says, 'Oh yeah.'
head improve outward work
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.