Robert Pirsig’s Book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Is Deeply Influenced By Yale University Philosopher F. S. C. Northrop's Book: The Meeting of East and West

DATE-LINE: March 2, 2006 by Henry Gurr: I Have Just Finished Reading “The Meeting Of East And West” . By F S C Northrop. And Find This Is A Most Interesting And Valuable Book!
… When Pirsig mentions Northrop's book (on ZMM page 108 Bantam paperback), Jump Down To Read Excerpt Below, where you see that => The ZMM riders are on the way to "the source" in the "high country of the mind" … This is their first set of mountains in Montana, where the mountains, and metaphorically, by implication the Narrator’s philosophy thinking has “A sudden cross-gust of cold air comes heavy with the smell of pines, and soon another and another, … [and metaphorically at] the base of the mountain. The dark ominous mass beyond dominates … “ [everything] …..
… Two pages earlier Author Pirsig had a discussion of Phaedrus' "lateral drift", and since the military tour to Korea, the Troop Ship and Northrop's philosophy book comes next, by implication Northrop ideas were an important part of this "lateral drift". Now because AFTER the Northrop discussion, the Narrator tells us that => The riders and the philosophical thinking, are heading to “the source”. and soon they will be in the “high country”, and “the high country or the mind”, by implication the Narrator will be into the study of philosophy, perhaps including the philosophy of Northrop.
… NOTE: Here we need to be alert to upcoming events in ZMM, because of the Narrator says, that there is over everything => something (metaphorically) => “dark ominous ….dominates … “ '' …..

Northrop's Book Is A Compelling Overview Of Global Culture And How To Think About The East And West. His book, published in 1946 just after WWII with Japan, is on how these East & West ancient and modern, cultures are about to mix and what could happen. Overall Professor Northrop has proper and very important things to say to us, even 76 years later!

ZMM Author Robert Pirsig Is Correct; The Book Is Exceedingly Difficult To Read. This is because Northrop’s writing (like most academic philosophers): a) Uses nearly no analogies, metaphors, similes, poetic turns, or image based descriptions. He is mostly long sentence, logic and word based, often making his sentences strung-out and convoluted. b) Thus he is a true philosopher in this respect. Also typical of most academic philosophers, c) He mostly has no feeling for how the insides our minds work or d) Even any (stated) awareness of our major mental epiphenomena, such as e) Our human metaphoric responses (poetry) and f) Our sudden mental flash of insights or sudden mental inspirations.

However, Despite My Above Stated Objections, Northrop Has Positive Qualities:
… I am happy here to report that Northrop is => 1) Entirely UN-LIKE many academic philosophers, Northrop, uses photographs extensively to illustrate his major points, and the impact is impressive! Plus, he deals with important matters that no one else seems to recognize. The most important being 2) His discussion of the (then) impending effects of the collision of various cultures (and nationalism) after WWII, and 3) his introduction and complete explication of his "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" (UAC).
… To me, Henry Gurr, Northrop’s UAC concept is exceedingly important idea, about how our mind works, as we look out at our surrounding natural world. And in turn, this exceedingly important idea, was reworked into Robert Pirsig’s exceedingly important ideas re human mental processes, and in ZMM labeled as “Quality” .
… At this point, in fact, I get to wondering how much Pirsig himself read the works of the various other philosophers he quotes, as opposed to for example => Merely extracting from Northrop, what he wrote into ZMM, about various philosophers?
… Plus, I am surprised that Anthony McWatt in his PhD Thesis examination of Robert Pirsig’s “Metaphysics of Quality”, mostly quoted a different Northrop book, namely "The Sciences and the Humanities" (1947), rather than "The Meeting of East and West" (1946).

In ZMM Book, The ZMM Narrator Introduces Us To Professor F. S. C. Northrop => “The book states that there’s a theoretic component of man’s existence which is primarily Western (and this corresponded to Phædrus’ laboratory past) and an esthetic component of man’s existence which is seen more strongly in the Orient (and this corresponded to Phædrus’ Korean past) and that these never seem to meet. These terms "theoretic" and "esthetic" correspond to what Phædrus later called classic and romantic modes of reality and probably shaped these terms in his mind more than he ever knew. The difference is that the classic reality is primarily theoretic but has its own esthetics too. The romantic reality is primarily esthetic, but has its theory too. The theoretic and esthetic split is between components of a single world. The classic and romantic split is between two separate worlds. The philosophy book, which is called The Meeting of East and West, by F. S. C. Northrop, suggests that greater cognizance be made of the "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" from which the theoretic arises..”

''' DATE-LINE: May 20, 2022 by Henry Gurr:
… In view of The Above ZMM Narrator’s Statement AND After Reading Northrop’s “The Meeting Of East And West” => I Come To The Very Significant Conclusion That => '''
… Philosopher F. S. C .Northrop's "Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum" Is A Clear Fore-Runner (And Likely A Preparation Arena) For Robert Pirsig’s “Quality” =>
… AND Northrop Was A Significant Guide For Robert Pirsig, In Constructing His Overall Philosophic Theory Called, “Metaphysics Of Quality” (MOQ) As Described In Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of motorcycle Maintenance.” .

Because Of It Importance To ZMM, Need To Be Clear Just What Is => .Northrop's "Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum"

A) Lets Use Dictionary Definitions To See => What Yale Philosopher F. S. C. Northrop Might Really Mean By His => “Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum” ?

B) But, In His OWN Words, Just What Does Yale Philosopher F. S. C. Northrop Really Mean When He Says His => “Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum ''?

1) [UAC is] The Buddhist-Hindu self [as a flowing mind state], in which Brahman and Atman are one, exists and is such that its existence is confirmable empirically by anyone anywhere who will take the trouble to do so.

2) [UAC is] is well known to those who have been brought up in traditional Indian culture, where the psychological operations of meditation, yoga, etc., have been practiced, in which one eliminates all the relativistic differentiations of sensing and introspecting from one's all-embracing, radically empirical experience, to be left with the undifferentiated Atman-that-is-Brahman without a difference, which, like the pool embracing its transitory waves, is identical not merely in all persons but also is the divine consciousness

3) [UAC is not as] Western scientists, philosophers, and religious people are accustomed to think only about facts in experience and knowledge which are differentiated, and hence determinate, factors that are this [way].

4) [UAC is not as] Westerners try to understand Nirv.na or the Atman-that-is-Brahman is that, because it has never occurred to them that anything undifferentiated exists and can be real, they always read into Nirvana, Atman, and Brahman Western determinate concepts of reality, conscious personality, and the religious object.

5) [For the UAC flowing mind state], it is necessary to assume something immediately experienced, all-embracing, psychical, and undifferentiated. With such an elemental, purely existentially experienced factor taken as primitive, ---- together with one mathematically constructed concept by postulation that is the physicist's field equation taken also as primitive, ---- the countless sensed, introspected differentiations relative to particular percipients and occasions can be derived as defined concepts.

6) The problem [For describing the UAC flowing mind state], then became that of finding a way to express this primitive, radically empirical factor. Note again its characteristics. It is conscious, immediately experienced, undifferentiated, embracing both the transitory relative, differentiated knower and the differentiated objects of knowledge, identical in both subject and object and yet the spontaneously creative source of all the differentiated esse est percipi qualities that come and go as phenomenal appearances within it.

7) . Little did the writer realize at the time that ancient Asian philosophers had attempted to use determinate words referring to differentiated factors of experience to express the undifferentiated and had given up trying to do so, realizing that, strictly speaking, it cannot be done.

8) There is another reason for the belief that understanding of the meaning of the Buddhist-Hindu concept of the person cannot be conveyed to Westerners by the use of the Buddhist-Hindu texts in either the original or translation or by the commentaries of Asian experts on those texts. Even the texts themselves tell us that they are useless to this end. When asked by his pupil what the word "Brahman" means, the guru, who knows, bats the question back to the pupil, asking him to state what he thinks it means, knowing full well that, whatever the reply, it will be wrong and will have to be answered with the words "Neti! Neti!"-it is not this, nor any other determinate that. Paradoxically, in such a reply the guru had answered the pupil's original question, the point being that Brahman is undifferentiated and hence cannot be described in determinate language.

9) [For the UAC flowing mind state], the undifferentiated factor in concrete experience and human consciousness, which I am trying futilely to describe, [is} precisely what the Buddhist philosophers mean by "Nirvana" and the Hindus by the "Atman-that-is-Brahman" without a difference.

10) [I finally realized] that an expression had to be found which would not describe this fact in anybody's conscious experience but point to where it is to be found, since only experiencing, it can give it. Reacting from the localized atomicity of the word "quality" and even its less determinate form "quale," I selected the word "continuum." This gave expression to the all-embracing character, the Brahman cosmical nature of this elemental factor in anyone's experience. But the word "continuum" in mathematical physics has a determinate, axiomatically constructed concept by-postulation meaning. Hence, the word "continuum" by itself would not do, if it is not to mislead Westerners, since the Brahman without differences is not a mathematically constructed, theoretically known entity. Instead, it is immediate experience with all differentiations of sensing and sensa removed, signifying nothing beyond itself. What adjective best distinguishes the all-embracing, radically empirical continuum of immediacy with all sensing and sensed differentia eliminated? At this point the word "aesthetic" suggested itself, since art does not talk about its subject matter but shows it denotatively and existentially as immediately experienced. Even so, this use of the adjective "aesthetic" is misleading unless it is taken, as the writer specified, in the radically immediate sense of impressionistic art, or "art in its first function," rather than of "art in its second function," which signifies some doctrinally inferred or mathematically conceived logos that transcends radically existential immediacy.
But the continuum of impressionistic, immediately experienced aesthetic immediacy is, except at its periphery, usually differentiated, whereas the primitive factor necessary to clarify the relation between the mathematical constructs of mathematical physics and the concrete data of experience, without growing a prodigious philosophical beard, is this aesthetic continuum of immediacy without the differentiations which sensing and sensa exhibit. The adjective "undifferentiated" added to the words "aesthetic continuum" seemed, therefore, to suffice to point the Western reader to the factor in question, and to prevent anyone from supposing that it is an object of sense awareness, since both sensing and the objects of the senses are differentiated.

11) These autobiographical experiences have been given here to one end. They suggest that the Buddhist-Hindu unqualifiedly non-dualistic and Vedantic concept of the person is empirically verifiable by anyone anywhere in at least the following three ways: 1) By the Asian operational techniques of meditation and yoga, in which all differentiations are removed from radically empirical experience. 2) By William James's observation that radically empirical experience is an all-embracing continuum which is undifferentiated at its periphery and transitorily differentiated only at what he called "the focus of attention." It may well be …. what the Buddha named Nirvana, the unqualifiedly non-dualistic Hindu refers to as the "self-without-differences," [This is the UAC flowing mind state], in which Atman and Brahman are one, and the writer called "the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum."

C) Combining Dictionary Definitions With His OWN Words, We Now Have A Compact Summary, Of Yale Philosopher F. S. C. Northrop Meaning For These Three Words =>

And How Does This Above Compare With Robert Pirsig’s Quality?

… From The Above, I Henry Gurr, understands Northrop’s above descriptions of his “The Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum” (UAC), to be => An immediately experienced, conscious, alert, openness, and readiness: … In Northrop’s own words from above he says “and yet the spontaneously creative source of all the differentiated esse est percipi qualities that come and go” [but] cannot be described.”
… To me these are very much like a Zen Mind.

… Thus From The Above Northrop Descriptions (Especially Above DATE-LINE: May 20, 2022), I Henry Gurr, Significantly Conclude => That Philosopher F. S. C .Northrop's "Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum" To Be A Fore-Runner (And Likely A Preparation Arena) For Robert Pirsig’s “Quality” And Pirsig’s Overall Philosophic Theory Called, “Metaphysics Of Quality” (MOQ) as described in Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of motorcycle Maintenance.” '''

FURTHER DISCUSSION By Henry Gurr.

1) When I (Henry Gurr) A Westerner First Heard Of Pirsig’s ZMM Book Mention Of This “The Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum” (UAC), I Originally Thought This Was =>
… ~ The Universe “out there and around us” prior to the operation of our mind-body operating on it: And once our 5 senses and mind operates on “what comes in from the universe”, we have perceptions & ideas, so what we see is “Differentiated”, which is what most Westerners will automatically do !!
2) But, 1) Above Can’t Be True, Because In Northrop’s Journal Article Titled => “The Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum,” he says this UAC is “ … the concrete differentiated data [in human mind as] of radically empirical immediate conscious experience, Which above also says “all-embracing, radically empirical experience … identical .. in all persons but also is the divine consciousness.” ''
3) And Thus We See That The UAC Is A State Of Mind, that a person is with awareness & practice, can mental transition into. But as Northrop emphasizes, whereas it is relatively easy for Easterners to achieve, this UAC state of mind, is nearly impossible for Westerners.
But Then The Question Arises => Can this mental transition from “Undifferentiated, to “Differentiated”” be seen as very close (if not identical to) an interpretation of Robert Pirsig’s Quality; as presented in his ZMM Book? …
3) Or what other interpretations do you see? Please leave your comments.

Click Here: Full Text Of => Northrop’s Journal Article Titled => “The Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum.”

SUMMARY: I Would Have Read Northrop’s Book Much Sooner Had I Realized Pirsig’s ZMM Is Based Some 20 - 30%, Northrop's book.
… Indeed, some very, very, important (and key) ZMM assertions have evidently come from Northrop and probably would not have been discovered by Pirsig in any other way. Therefore a "must read" for Pirsig Pilgrims & ZMM Fans.

Wikipedia On F S C Northrop’s Life & Career.

New York Times Obituary Re F. S. C. Northrop.

To Help The Reader => A Long Passage From Robert Pirsig’s ZMM Book That => Includes The Narrator’s Complete Statement About => Professor F. S. C. Northrop And Northrop’s Book "The Meeting of East and West".

NOTE: This excerpt includes several paragraphs before and after the Narrator's discussion of Northrop, so you can see how Northrop’s book fits in to the ZMM Narrative.
… And from our knowledge of ZMM, we may assume Pirsig’s positive, but puzzling, encounter in Korea with the Oriental Mind, was the very reason Pirsig resolved to learn more, and subsequently somehow discover & purchase Northrop’s book, and have it ready to read, on the ~16 day, 6600-mile troopship 1946 voyage from Korea back to the USA.

"..... His [Phaedrus'] letters from Korea are radically different from his earlier writing, indicating this same turning point. They just explode with emotion. He writes page after page about tiny details of things he sees: marketplaces, shops with sliding glass doors, slate roofs, roads, thatched huts, everything. Sometimes full of wild enthusiasm, sometimes depressed, sometimes angry, sometimes even humorous, he is like someone or some creature that has found an exit from a cage he did not even know was around him, and is wildly roaming over the countryside visually devouring everything in sight.
… Later he made friends with Korean laborers who spoke some English but wanted to learn more so that they could qualify as translators. He spent time with them after working hours and in return they took him on long weekend hikes through the hills to see their homes and friends and translate for him the way of life and thought of another culture. .
… He is sitting by a footpath on a beautiful windswept hillside overlooking the Yellow Sea. The rice in the terrace below the footpath is full-grown and brown. His friends look down at the sea with him seeing islands far out from shore. They eat a picnic lunch and talk to one another and to him and the subject is ideographs and their relation to the world. He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working. His friends nod and smile and eat the food they’ve taken from tins and say no pleasantly. He is confused by the nod yes and the answer no and so repeats the statement. Again comes the nod meaning yes and the answer no. That is the end of the fragment, but like the wall it’s one he thinks about many times. .
… The final strong fragment from that part of the world is of a compartment of a troopship. He is on his way home. The compartment is empty and unused. He is alone on a bunk made of canvas laced to a steel frame, like a trampoline. There are five of these to a tier, tier after tier of them, completely filling the empty troop compartment. .
… This is the foremost compartment of the ship and the canvas in the adjoining frames rises and falls, accompanied by elevator feelings in his stomach. He contemplates these things and a deep booming on the steel plates all around him and realizes that except for these signs there is no indication whatsoever that this entire compartment is rising massively high up into the air and then plunging down, over and over again. He wonders if it is that which is making it difficult to concentrate on the book before him, but realizes that no, the book is just hard. It’s a text on Oriental philosophy and it’s the most difficult book he’s ever read. He’s glad to be alone and bored in this empty troop compartment, otherwise he’d never get through it.
… The book states that there’s a theoretic component of man’s existence which is primarily Western (and this corresponded to Phædrus’ laboratory past) and an esthetic component of man’s existence which is seen more strongly in the Orient (and this corresponded to Phædrus’ Korean past) and that these never seem to meet. These terms "theoretic" and "esthetic" correspond to what Phædrus later called classic and romantic modes of reality and probably shaped these terms in his mind more than he ever knew. The difference is that the classic reality is primarily theoretic but has its own esthetics too. The romantic reality is primarily esthetic, but has its theory too. The theoretic and esthetic split is between components of a single world. The classic and romantic split is between two separate worlds. The philosophy book, which is called The Meeting of East and West, by F. S. C. Northrop, suggests that greater cognizance be made of the "undifferentiated aesthetic continuum" from which the theoretic arises. .
… Phædrus didn’t understand this, but after arriving in Seattle, and his discharge from the Army, he sat in his hotel room for two whole weeks, eating enormous Washington apples, and thinking, and eating more apples, and thinking some more, and then as a result of all these fragments, and thinking, returned to the University to study philosophy. His lateral drift was ended. He was actively in pursuit of something now. .
… A sudden cross-gust of cold air comes heavy with the smell of pines, and soon another and another, and as we approach Red Lodge I’m shivering. .
… At Red Lodge the road’s almost joined to the base of the mountain. The dark ominous mass beyond dominates even the roofs of the buildings on either side of the main street. ..... ".

Click Here For Details Of A Korean War Troopship Which Must Be Very Similar To That Of Phaedrus, With ~40 Good Photos, Of Such A Ship, And Events On It, circa 1962. This ~14 years after Phaedrus voyage in 1946, only two years after Northrop’s East & West was published.

To Help The Reader, Relevant UAC vs Quality Excerpts From => '' "A Review of

Dr. Anthony McWatt's Essay: ‘Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality’ ". '' By MOQ Expert Matt Kundert.
… “ … McWatt explains that Pirsig is identifying Quality with F. S. C. Northrop’s “aesthetic continuum”: “what is immediately perceived in an all embracing (emotion producing) field.”6 Quality is to be understood as an event, an event that precedes the designation of subject and object, rather than the other way around as most philosophers in the history of philosophy have presumably done.
… It is at this point that McWatt describes Pirsig’s distinction between Dynamic Quality and static patterns of Quality. McWatt says that this lines up with what the Buddhists refer to as “unconditioned reality” and “conditioned reality,” respectively. McWatt says, “Dynamic Quality is the term given by Pirsig to the continually changing flux of immediate reality while static quality refers to any concept abstracted from this flux.” It might be useful at this point to lay out Northrop’s conceptual apparatus as it is closely identified with Pirsig’s. For Northrop, there are three terms that are presently important. Northrop’s fountainhead concept is the “differentiated aesthetic continuum,” which is, it would seem, what Pirsig and McWatt are equating with Quality. The second term is the “undifferentiated aesthetic continuum,” which is then explicitly aligned with Dynamic Quality.7 The third term is the “concepts of the differentiations,” which we can easily gather is aligned to static patterns of Quality. What is interesting with what Pirsig does to Northrop is that, for Northrop, the differentiated aesthetic continuum is aesthetic precisely because it is not conceptual at all, but is instead the immediately apprehended “qualitatively ineffable, emotionally moving continuum of colors, sounds and feelings.” In other words, for Northrop, “aesthetic” refers to our sensations (and emotions) whereas “differentiation” refers to our concepts. For Pirsig, however, everything becomes aesthetic once everything becomes Quality, value. This is what makes Pirsig sound like Dewey. Quality is experience which is the sum total of reality. This sum total of reality is a differentiated aesthetic continuum because, within it, we can distinguish the undifferentiated background (Dynamic Quality) against which concepts take shape (static patterns of Quality).
… This schematic begins to fall apart, though. Besides the ambiguity of whether Pirsig thinks our connection with Quality is sensational or whether sensations should be distinguished (and therefore a subsection of) our overall connection to Quality, Pirsig, and McWatt after him, is ambiguous over Dynamic Quality’s relationship to Quality. We saw for Northrop distinguishing between the overall differentiated aesthetic continuum from its two constituent parts (the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum and the differentiating concepts) is important. This importance is obfuscated in Pirsig. For Pirsig, it would seem that Quality is synonymous with Dynamic Quality. The first clue is that Pirsig keeps both Quality and Dynamic Quality undefined. What’s the difference between two things that are undefined if the only way we could tell the difference is by first defining them? The second clue is how McWatt describes Quality as “undivided experience” and Dynamic Quality as “unconditioned reality.” What’s the difference between being undivided and unconditioned? None that I can see, at least not in McWatt’s usage. After reading McWatt’s description of Quality, when moving on to his description of Dynamic Quality its hard not to get the impression that you had just read this all before: like just a minute ago when you read about Quality.
… The third clue is contained in the comparison of Pirsig and Northrop. Pirsig and McWatt are very careful to keep the term “immediate” as far away from the static side of Quality as possible, yet for Northrop both the “undifferentiated aesthetic continuum” and the “concepts of differentiation” are immediately apprehended. Reading McWatt’s description of Quality and Dynamic Quality shows him hammering down on the immediateness of both, but in his description of static patterns its immediateness is a bit harder to pick up on. In fact, McWatt quotes Northrop on the idea of an “aesthetic continuum” and “immediate experience” for use in interpreting Quality, but obscures the connection to Pirsig by saying that “it is from experience that concepts such as subjects and objects arise; such concepts do not create experience or perceptions.”) It is true, concepts do not create our experience, but if we follow Northrop, neither do they arise out it. And finally, McWatt comes right out and says that “Dynamic Quality refers to ultimate reality which includes absolutely everything.” But I thought Quality was the ultimate reality, which was then divided into Dynamic and static parts? …. “
The Above Is An Excerpt From Matt Kundert’s Whole Article, Click Here.

A Few Of The More Interesting Finds From A Google Search For => … Meeting of East and West Northrop ….

… “F. S. C. Northrop… remains one of the only two people I have ever met with what tempts me to call… “a genius for teaching.” Thus wrote the British popularizer of philosophy, Bryan Magee, in Confessions of a Philosopher of Northrop’s graduate seminars at Yale that he attended in the mid 1950s.
… Never have I known anyone so excited by ideas; and he was able to pass on not only the ideas but also the excitement. He would walk into the room already talking, and from the non perfectly formed sentences would come guise ring [geyser] out of his head as if he were a geyser blowing its top…
… [W]e were stimulated as I have ever known any other teacher stimulate his students. Bright young graduate students would emerge from his seminars thrilled by the prospects they had just glimpsed and impatient to pursue them… and they would rush straight to the library, lusting to get at the books. ......”
Continue reading at http://www.roadtothemiddleclass.com/chappies.php?id=84

… Click Here & AFTER This Page Comes Up, You Can Click At Right, For The Type Of Computer File You Want.

… Click Here & AFTER This Page Comes Up You Can Read A PORTION Of This Review.

… Not sure if it is right or wrong, but here is an example of this WebPage’s criticism =>
“For philosophers of this genre, philosophy itself and anything philosophical, in the final analysis, pale into indistinction and no amount of rational or speculative discourse could penetrate nor unravel the true nature of experiential reality. Northrop did not listen to these men which include the existentialists for he quickly brushed them aside as inconsequential or even harmful to his attempt at world synthesis. He was either blind to the full nature of the aesthetic or was blinded by the power of scientific methodology. In either case, he had an opportunity to correct himself early on and to extricate himself from the self-imposed theoretic conundrum but he did not and thus his theory suffers badly.”
Click Here For WebPage “Northropian Categories of Experience Revisited.”

7) To Help The Reader, To Understanding Both A) ZMM Book AND B) F. S. C. Northrop’s Undifferentiated Aesthetic Continuum (UAC), Please Study The Following Interesting & Relevant Excerpts =>

A) Excerpts From “Understanding Buddhism”: => The Following Are Author. Nolan Pliny Jacobson’s Passages Concerning “Eastern & Buddhist Discussion” Showing Relevant Parallels To ZMM Book”, Which Are Marked by Henry Gurr With Underlined.
… [Preface XI] "It is this exploratory; tentative, pragmatic, purposive use of conceptual structure that makes Buddhism in the fullest sense the most selfcorrective orientation in the history of the world.
… "The ideas and perceptions constituting the core of this book are a tiny portion of a flood of such cross-cultural reflections between radically different racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and ancestral orders of life. Cultural encapsulation and its essential counterpart, the self-centeredness of individual existence, are now part of the unbalanced brutalized past we seek to survive. In this global struggle Buddhism teaches us that the universe is present in the experience of each individual and that the life-and death struggle is to become fully awake.
… "Every chapter in this book has emerged out of such crosscultural communication, most of them being expressed initially in lectures and seminars on both sides of the Pacific Basin, usually followed by publication in journals devoted to Asian and comparative thought. I am grateful to The Eastern Buddhist Society in Kyoto [Japan] for permission to use in chapters 4 and 9 formulations first advanced in Eastern Buddhist, volumes 8, 9 and 15, and to the Society for Comparative Religious Philosophy; Tokyo, for permission to use ideas first expressed in Comparative Thought, June 1983. Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use excerpts from the following copyrighted material: …. “
… " ‘It is striking,’" one writer says, ‘how many men and women return to or take up for the first time some form of a traditional art in their middle or latcr years.’ .. A Kyoto professor writes that "it is mainly through these rediscovered arts or disciplines that Japanese are awakening to the traditional spirituality that has made Japan strong."
… "All who pursue these traditional disciplines for extended periods of time discover in their own experience sources of vitality and serenity; wholeness and harmony; freedom and spontaneity; depth and integrity. These experiences enable them to transcend feelings of personal fragmentation, rootlessness, [Pg 109] egocenteredness, aggressiveness, and loss of identity which are prominent forms of suffering in the West. Individuals discover their identity, not in any cultural pattern or empirical social class, but in the flow of unstructured quality sweeping like a kaleidoscope across their feeling-systems, enlarging their one-sided fraction of experience with the inexhaustible energy of the world.
… "Practiced with diligence, they enable individuals to tap hidden resources and penetrate to some "bottomless" source of power, with a life-enhancing return. In the most fully acculturated Japanese, the result in an experience of the original and creative flow of life behind the lattices of cultural form. Individuals discover that what matters most is incarnate in the aesthetic underpinnings of life.
… "While men and women of all ages and ethnic traditions in the West look for their freedom to be increased for them by legal systems and Congressional action, the Japanese find freedom growing as they discover rich vectors of energy meeting in their own experience out of the ultimate energy of the world This is what they do [in] patterns deliver in all individuals who persevere. .
… "The Japanese have a word for their struggle against confinement and artificiality (one thinks of what they call "Hong Kong flowers") and death by degrees from institutional suffocation. Combining two words borrowed from Buddhism, jiyi and jizai, they call it jiyiljizai, meaning acting freely, unrestricted and unbound, reflecting on the true nature of things, and acting in resonance with the precious and unspeakable sources of life. One of the traits of a Bodhisattva is jiyt1ijizai, perfect freedom. It is a freedom from the ideological lock and key of conceptual metaphors imposed by social groups on their members, freedom from abstractions and emotions which shrink awareness to [only] what is familiar and fragmentary in life. Kenneth Yasuda complains that the intellectualism of the Western poet gets in the way. "It ceases thereby to be poetry, it is not experienced. [To them] "Emotions of joy and sadness are intruders; they ruin the unity of the individual in his or her direct encounter with the world." “
…… [Skip Pages] "Chapter 9. The Confluence of Buddhist and American Thought .
… " The sudden reversal that has taken place since World War II between nations of East and West, particularly the shift in the [Pg 118] deepest currents of the world's life from Europe to the Pacific Basin and the cultures most heavily impacted with Buddhism, is a critical turning point in the development of the human community at large. It constitutes a transformation as significant in its influence upon the species as the four pivotal events around which the history of "the modern world" has frequently been written: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Russian Revolution, and the rise of modern science.
… "This reversal in the tide of human affairs finds philosophy in only one Western society eminently prepared to adapt itself to the shift. American philosophy, indeed, has been coming of age in the midst of this radically altered state of affairs. Throughout its career it has been struggling to shake itself free from the great architectonic European systems of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx. It has struggled to shift the focus in philosophic insight away from the long habit of using symbolic processes to control what men and women can know, what they ought to do, and what they can expect. It has shifted the axis of human affairs to the feeling side of experience and the live nexus of original individualized feelings in the self-active experience in which individual men and women find the secret of life.
… "The focus of American thought has been centered in experience, in what individuals do and what is done to them as life responds freely to life, over and above any conception of how things ought to be. American philosophy is the first in the West to penetrate the outer shell of abstractions and emancipate the novel feelings and forms of awareness always emerging in the live creature. This effort to feel out the lines, folds, and rhythms of the basic medium in which the drama of life is enacted, this American revolution in what has been called lithe seat of intellectual authority, is already prominent in Emerson, becomes central with William James, wears an obvious Christian form in Royce, addresses the basic educational problems in John Dewey, expresses itself in the forms of logic and science in Peirce, acquires an elaborate metaphysical matrix in Whitehead, and in [Pg 119] the major living member of the group. This Fits What Other Authors Say. Charles Hartshorne, mounts an all-sided attack upon the concept of "enlightened selfinterest" which is paralleled only in the Buddhist past. Rejection of permanence, the acceptance of the transitoriness of life lanicca), the evacuation of any not-further-analyzable substances from both human experience and the world at large (anatta), and the disclosure of the individual's dynamic organic relatedness of which richness of life consists are all prominent perspectives shared by Buddhism and what Max Fisch calls "the Classical Age" of American thought.
… "How was it possible for this one culture-world in the West to arrive at methods and conclusions of central importance in Buddhism, curing human reason of its imperious European ways? What kind of cultural habits were set afoot on these shores, powerful enough to clear away the cosmological and ontological debris originally absorbed by everyone who came from the nations of the West: the persuasion that our concepts and values are rooted in divine revelation (Aquinas), in an eternal structure which mind discerns beyond all sense experience and change (Plato), in the Unconditioned which transcends time and space (Tillich), in Absolute Reason waiting in the wings of history to give structure to events and freedom to man (Hegel), in forms of understanding that yield universal and valid knowledge of the way reality must necessarily appear to minds such as ours (Kant), or in the structure that is in sense data independent of any influence of the human mind (Russell)? By what shift of the ground beneath their feet was it possible for a community of philosophers to renounce these" cozy conceptual superstructures," as a bhiilkhu from Sri Lanka has put it,2 and to create on this continent an openness, receptivity, and awareness to the world as it is presently becoming? How did it happen that the philosophers of what Max Fisch calls the "Classical Age" developed a sense of sharing a kind of relational power that is theirs, not by reason of what they all may know; but by reason of the interchange that links them to the rest of nature and to the cultural changes that were taking place? Philosophy grows out of human affairs. [Pg 120] What happened here to bring the major strands of American thought closer to the Buddhist orientation than to the cognition-based, definition-minded, concept-oriented, culture-encapsulated abstractions of European thought?
… "Youngest of the major nations, having only recently celebrated its Bicentennial, the United States was composed from the outset of people who could never quite succeed in fitting their feelings and dreams into the institutionalized patterns of the past. Fleeing religious persecution, material deprivation, avaricious landlords, forcible enslavement, debtors' prisons, war, and fighting here for their very lives against most of these dehumanizing forces, they did not narrowly win their cherished independence in order to give themselves into the control of another powerful social class or established religion. Their struggle for freedom from earthly and heavenly rulers, social classes, infallible truths, inflexible laws, and the tax collector continues it is not so distant in time that it must be remembered in a book. [Wherein the remainder of this chapter answers these questions “How did it happen?” ] [Skip pges.] .
… "Buddhism has provided millions of people of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and nations with methods of meditation which stop the internal dialogue with the abstract facsimiles of a world that is always dominating our thoughts. In meditation we discover that what we formulate and control with the theoretical component in our experience tends to diminish our responsiveness to life, and that the n'1ost penetrating insights into what is fundamental and real, the greatest suffering, the gratitude that opens the springs of compassion-all are trivialized by conceptual form. “
… "The aim of meditation can be indicated by the work of three major philosophers of our time, two from the West, one from Japan. In a recent study of Wittgenstein, Jeffrey Thomas Price makes a surprisingly Buddhist statement: "One can almost imagine the world/' he writes, “as pure, undifferentiated movement and words as instances of absolute separation or distinctiveness." The spontaneity and concreteness of our most extraordinary moments of awareness, according to Wittgenstein, are as substantial and important as anything present to any individual. The vivid original moment in our experience has its originality reduced in a fleeting, immediately forgotten moment by becoming customary before it can even be taken into account; one slips so easily into customary speech that only a most extraordinary account can unearth the unspoken origins. "The moment falls from itself into something that can be said, before its richness could attract attention " . The original beginnings of every item of consciousness are obscured in this way; by being taken up into the prevailing forms with which members of a cultural system tell one another what they are expected to say. [Pg 136]
… ""Only the undoing of a strange and all-pervasive misunderstanding," Price writes! "Can reveal our awareness of things for what it really is. "Beneath or prior to our present awareness there occurs a process, usually long forgotten, which Wittgenstein believes should be uncovered if the deep aspect of meaning is to be revealed. "
… "At this point in his achievement, as the world knows, Wittgenstein’s investigations proceeded to clarify the patterns that enable men and women to participate in a meaningful world. To the Buddhist, he missed the point. [End Excerpts Help The Reader Understanding Both ZMM Book and F. S. C. Northrop’s UAC.]

B) Excerpts From “Understanding Buddhism” => The Following Is "What Mr. Nolan Pliny Jacobson Says About Professor Northrop’s Work. =>
… "Our second Western philosopher begins the first systematic comparative study of East-West thought and culture where Wittgenstein left off. Northrop also is living with the Buddhist statement of Price! that words have within themselves the possibility for introducing an "absolute separation from the world as "pure, undifferentiated movement." Northrop’s now famous distinction is between "the theoretical component in experience" and "the all-embracing, indeterminate aesthetic continuum." During my field work in Burma in 1961-1962, 1 found that intellectuals who had read Northrop considered his writings, and this distinction in particular, as an appropriate way of getting clear on the nature of Nirvana and the major obstacles to its attainment. Northrop writes:

… "Alexandra David-Neel agrees: “Whether we are aware of it or not, the thoughts, desires, the needs which we feel for life, our thirst for it-nothing of this is completely ours, all of it is collective, for it is the flowing river of incalculable moments of consciousness having its source in the impenetrable depths of eternity.” “
[END Northrop passage] [.And END Passages from book “Understanding Buddhism”. ]

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ATTENTION1: INSTRUCTIONS RE THE BELOW “ACCESS FULL TEXT”:
… Please Read & Do ONLY the Bolded A), B), C), D) Below, Which You Should Perform On Single A Browser Page => The Below Blue Links Should Be ONLY Used, if you “Get Lost”.

ATTENTION2: CONCERNING THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW
… At some point you may be asked to “Log On” or other similar words. If you already have an internet Archive Account, you should use that. Otherwise, do a “set up a new account”, which will use your email for confirmation. This whole process is fairly easy with no glitches.

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Steps To Access Full Text Of => Nolan Pliny Jacobson’s Important & Illuminating Book “Understanding Buddhism”,

A) Starting On https:Archive.org Home Page, A Search Request For (( “Understanding Buddhism” Nolan Pliny Jacobson)) Gives =>
After This Page Comes Up Select Choice “Search Metadata” & Click “GO”

B) Cont From A) Above => The Page That Comes Up Is Confusing, But Scroll Way On Down To Where You See An Image of Book Cover A Red Title “UNDERSTANDING BUDDHISM” & Immediately Below “NOLAN PLINY JACOBSON”, And Below Face Of Buddha Statue. …
ATTENTION: Just Click On This Image, Which Gives C) Below =>

C) Cont From B) Above => The Page That Comes Up Is Alo Confusing, But You Will See Words “INTERNET ARCHIVE’, And Just Below And to Right You Will See Square Box With Mouse Hover “Toggle Fullscreen”.
ATTENTION: Just Click On This Square Box.

D) Cont From C) Above => The Page That Comes Up Is Even More Confusing, But You Will Realize You Are Looking At A Book’s Page, Likely Showing Way Too Big. To Make Smaller, Just Hold Down Your Keyboard’s CTRL Key, and Several Times Pres The Key With Minus Sign (--), Until Readable Book Page Size.
… The ClickDrag Slider At Bottom, Allows You To Go To Different Pages.
… You Will Then See To Right Of “Slider” Are < > Click Points to Jump To Next Page.
… NOTE: Don’t Bother To Try => The Earphone Icon, Since This “Read this book aloud”, Will Say Just A Series Of Numbers. Other Internet Archive Books Correctly Say Words.

ATTENTION: In The Circumstance That The View Of The Book’s Words Are Bad Blurry & Or Ill-Formed Letters, Or Other Problems => You May Want To Do The Following => Which Will (After Several Steps) Will Load The Entire Book, Into A Very Functional Browser Display Screen =>

E) Cont From D) Above =>
… ON SCREEN OF D) ABOVE => AT LOWER Right Click On “Toggle Fullscreen”,
ATTENTION: Then Just Scroll Down To At Right Choices For “DOWNLOAD OPTIONS” .Here I Recommend Click on “PDF”.

E) Cont From D) Above => In The Page That Comes Up, You Will Be Able To Easily Move Around (Through All Pages Of This Book), AND With CTRL F, Get A Search Box, Into Which Type In Any Word Or Phrase, To Do A Search.
… ALSO, At Upper Right You Will See Down Arrow \/ Icon: Click On This To Get Download.pdf, Of Whole Book, Into Your Computer.
ATTENTION: Here You Will Be Looking At The Whole Book In Viewer For PDF. Also Upper Right Shows Arrow \/ For Download.

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F) Google Books Offers Access To Parts Of => Nolan Pliny Jacobson’s Important & Illuminating Book “Understanding Buddhism”,
… ''' This Is How Henry Gurr Originally Learned This Book Existed, And How Very Good It Is.
Click Here Google Book Version, Which (After This Page Comes Up) Shows Only Pages Relevant To Henry Gurr’s Search Words Given In Search Box At Top. Of course a different Google Search will show other parts of this book.

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On Amazon.com’s Kindle eBook Has (For Relatively Low $ Cost), Full Text Of => Nolan Pliny Jacobson’s Important & Illuminating Book “Understanding Buddhism”,
… AND Here Is Where Can Hear “This book spoken aloud”: After This Link Come Up, At Left Click On ~"Hear Sample"

[[| After This Page Comes Up You Will See At Left Click On ~"Hear Sample"

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Buddhism/dp/B00FJSI3P2/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Resources For Further Reading:

What ZMM Is Really About, May Be Also Discerned By Looking For It, In My “Why Read Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance “ by Henry S Gurr, ZMMQ Sitemaster.
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents/WhyReadZMM

Many Who Hear About Robert Pirsig’s "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance"(ZMM), Ask => "What Is ZMM Really About? "
… Although I am not an expert, below is my reply, to this question, originally from Ben Hughes, on Miles City Forums. By Henry S Gurr ZMMQ SiteMaster.
… ZMM Is A book that is a Westerner’s Guide to Tao Te Ching, and to Zen Eastern Philosophy and Thought ; as well as help for Westerners to understand the ways of Zen-Like thinking of Eastern people, and even the people themselves. Moreover, ZMM guides the reader to live more in the present, and in achieving peace of mind and why. More details on this aspect of ZMM are available here, at my page called Westerner’s Guide to Tao Te Ching.
You May Also See Much of What ZMM Is Really About, By Reading-This-Into What 4-Star & 5-Star Amazon ZMM Reviewers say what they what they found in ZMM!
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/index.php?n=Documents.ReadZmmBestWay

My Modest Collection of "Best Books Lists".
A way to gauge the relative importance of ZMM, is to see it’s rating compared to other books people have found valuable. At this link you will see that Robert Pirsig is listed right along with other authors of literary and philosophical classics. These authors include: Tolstoy, Melville, and J.R.R. Tolkien. See, for example, "Top 100 Novels" / "Best Spiritual Books of Century" / "Great Books" here:
http://web.usca.edu/math/faculty-sites/henry-gurr/ZMMFindSiteInfo.dot#BestBooks

10 Tips On How To Read Philosophy, OR Indeed ANY Book!
by Matt Nelson, July 07, 2015.
https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/10-tips-on-how-to-read-philosophy/4814/

Just In Case You Haven’t Already Figured, I Am Totally Convinced Of The importance & Long Term, Outstanding Worth of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
My serious study of ZMM, goes Back To ~1987, and over the years my conviction has only increased!! This comes through my continued efforts to write-up these ZMMQ Pages, and more recently The Sarah Vinke Biography. But in addition, my conclusions become most especially firm, because, of how Pirsig’s ZMM Is strongly supported by many insightful authors, and How ZMM’s Static Quality and Dynamic Quality, Are Supported by Henry Gurr’s Proto Theory of How Our Mind Works: Our General Problem Solving Brain, Is Quality In Action, & Seeks Best:

By HSG 2Mar07, RevHSG17Aug07, RevHSG&EMM11Jun16, RevHSG19-27May22, 11 Aug22, 26Sept22.
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