Why Read Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance (ZMM), by Henry S Gurr, ZMMQ Sitemaster.

It is VERY HARD To Say => Why Read ZMM: Because ZMM Is Really MANY, MANY books, ALL IN ONE!
Just The Same, Let’s See If the Following Helps.

You Should Want to Read ZMM, Because It’s =>

Good
A Good Read
Interesting
Enjoyable
Rewarding
Penetrating
Illuminating
Revealing
Meaningful
Relevant
Challenging’
Satisfying
Exhilarating
So much pleasure, you pick it up every night,
So amazed …. your mind just keeps pondering its profound ideas …. every day!

You Should Want to Read ZMM, Because You Want A Book That Book makes you =>
Stop and think and question and wonder
Helps you grow intellectually and personally
Learn new ideas
Learn about yourself, and persons around you
Learn even new vistas in science, the universe, existence, and encounter reality.
Learn how your mind works,
Puzzled & provoked, into new awareness
A) You want a book that, examines fundamental life questions, life’s purpose, your values, and how they relate to today’s society, and indeed learn how & the ways our present day society is quite dysfunctional: Then understand why, and not be captured by modern society, and constructively get on with your life, overcome life’s frustrations, and constructively, to do what you can, to help society out of its current morass.
B) The ideas in "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" (ZMM) will offer any serious reader deep and revolutionary truths concerning the whole process of achieving and living a quality life. This book can, and has, changed lives; as is attested in many Amazon.com reviews. (See link below.)
C) Like never before in your whole life: ZMM will bring Relief & Tears of Recognition : What you’ve been needing for a long time!

Why Read ZMM? Because It’s =>
Great Literature!!
Top 100 Novels
Top 100 Spiritual Books
A BOOK THAT is among the truly “GREAT BOOKS OF ALL TIME” , and as such, is one you will come back to year after year, because so illuminating. AND your read for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc time, your realize you come away with an ever expanding understanding of yourself, your society, your education, and your word! These of course are why suck books are on lists of “Great Books”, and indeed so widely recognized, that they ARE one of the Truly Great Classica. Like all great literature, you’ll never forget Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance!
http://web.usca.edu/math/faculty-sites/henry-gurr/ZMMFindSiteInfo.dot#BestBooks

AND: You Want To Read A book that is “The most widely read book on Philosophy, ever!”
As of this writing, the statement that” ZMM is most widely read book on Philosophy, ever!” Google finds repeated on the i internet at least 4 times, at links below. My first awareness of this statement, based on hearsay, was in Robert Pirsig’s letter to me, July 9, 1994, which is posted at 4th link below: However, With Google, I can not find any solid factual evidence, to back it up. Besides ZMMQ, here’s WebPages, which make this full statement. Guardian Link also has several reader enthusiastic comments, and the cbc.ca/radio link also has an interview with Robert Pursig. =>
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/philosophy
https://www.theguardian.com/books/table/2011/jun/24/philosophy-politics-economics-favourite-books
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-motorcycle-is-yourself-1.2914205
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents/LetPirsig1994-2005
---

Read ZMM, Because It’s A Highly Influential & Life Changing Book! =>

AND

These Inspired Enthusiasts, Devote A Large Portion Of Their Life, In Deep Study, and Promotion of ZMM.
You may learn of the accomplishments of such persons (of whom I am aware), by an Edit > Find > the LAST Names of the following persons, here. (NOTE: If you are using > Edit > Find, in Chrome Browser, you will see indicated, the number of mentions of each person’s name.)
ZMM INSPIRED ENTHUSIASTS, A Partial Listing;
=>Paul Lewis, Ian Glendinning,’s Pirsig Pages by Psybertron, Anthony McWatt, Lee Glover, James Forrester, Des Molloy, Robert and Gennie DeWees, Tina DeWeese, Chas Pinkava, Kevin ___, David Buchanan, Mark Richardson, Gary Wegner, Franz Schabmueller and Gregor Schleicher, Henry Gurr, Ronald L. Disanto & Thomas J. Steele, Urban Dharma, Brad Cox, Christopher Bartneck, Bodvar Skutvik, Margaret Hettinger, Michael Stoic, Dan Glover, Patrick Jennings, Computer Programmer BZen, Robert Nelson, Doug Renselle, Matt Kundert, Patricia Morrill, Caryl Johnston, Bill Paton, Mason Bisson, Participants in MoQ Discuss, Speakers at Montana State University’s Pirsig Chautauqua Conference, Contributing Authors of Article & Books at http://RobertPirsig.com

Read ZMM, Because =>

Thus, ZMM is truly a Westerner’s Guide to Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, and to Eastern Philosophy and Thought; as well as help for Westerners to understand the ways of thinking of Eastern people and peoples. More details on this aspect of ZMM are available here:
Westerner’s Guide to Tao Te Ching?

   > (:comment you should only see this in edit mode!)  Ryan: 

A) Above you will discern some ~11 different SMALL of my editing improvement changes: Please get a grip on these, and then, as appropriate, move them into the ~ 3 to 4 other places on ZMMQ, where also Lao Tzu + Eastern Thought for Westerners happen now to be
B) In the “For Further Reading”, section at the end of this page and it’s companion page “Why Read ZMM?”, please look for any of my left over mental mix-ups; where I have reversed labels Why Read <> and What Really About. Since these two pages are meant to be complementary, you can help me edit to this achievement. Basically the only place for duplication, of content is the For Further Reading parts at the page..
C) Let me know when you have been able to .do these.
D) Let’s try an experiment: Leave these blind comments in the pmWiki page, to hive history to Future ZMMQ Editors. < )

To Support My Above Statements, Please Read What The Experts Say (The Evidence)”

There Are Aspects Of The Book That Speak To Me Deeply.
I agree with Pirsig that ZAMM is a "culture-bearing book"3and has the capacity to help us heal a profound cultural wound. Pirsig's description of the Classic/Romantic split and how these two disparate
world-views can be united seems revolutionary to me. And his idea that we should treat technology as part of our individual selves sounds right to me, revealing as it does [that I need to improve], a serious personal failing on my part.
http://anntweedy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/tweedy-zamm-op-fin.pdf

What ZAMM Is About …
In ZAMM, is the fact that its central thesis is about "trying to find a way to harmonize the rational with the irrational", which Pirsig termed his "metaphysics of quality." …
[My] Assessment: ZAMM is enjoyable and thought-provoking, though it gets heavy going in the middle, with an enormous amount of time devoted to Plato and Aristotle …. from a rationalist point of view, ZAMM is firmly grounded in reason and the human experience ….
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance

Heather Sinclair of The Travel Type WebSite, Has A Slide-Show That (In, Outline Form Below), Gives Her Summary Conclusions Re What ZAMM Is About .

A) Title: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Book Review: Why The Hype
[Re formatted for pmWiki by HSG.]

B) What’s the deal with this book?

C) So, what is it about?

D) What is it really about?

E) Why You Should Read It

F) Why you should NOT read it

G) [ZMM has much] Philosophy

H) [ZMM has much] Travel

I) Summary

[SITEMASTER’s NOTE: Heather Sinclair says above, that the ZMM travel story part of the book, is “super boring” & “not much”!! This is both trivial & true, UNLESS you the reader, take the time, to perceive how the travel story makes a big contribution to ZMM: You, the reader should look for how the travel story has a quite important place, and contribution in ZMM!! You will come to see that, the travel story

http://thetraveltype.com/zen-art-motorcycle-review-presentation/

This visionary book details the travails of an unassuming writer who lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The book is told from the perspective of the narrator, a forty-year-old man who writes technical manuals for a living. Interestingly, …. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an entire experience in philosophy and spirituality condensed into an extremely thought-provoking novel combining themes of spirituality and quality. It has three main streams of thought: the story of the motorcycle-riding narrator and his son, the story of Phaedrus, and the Chautauqua that is the narrator’s way of explaining Phaedrus’ philosophy. The principle of Quality, a word capitalized by Pirsig and elevated into the metaphysical ether, lies at the heart of the book, which is really a philosophical tract half-heartedly disguised as a novel. The book is subtitled An Inquiry into Values and it weaves an intricate and often meandering storyline as the reader is taken through a road trip with the narrator’s son Chris and two friends (John and Sylvia Sutherland). ….

I had read this book approximately seven years ago for an undergraduate class and on my first read, the book seemed to detail the workings of a motorcycle and all its vagaries. On my second read, the underlying relationship between the author’s frequent dive into defining quality and his personal life started to build an intricate story in my mind. ….

The main argument of the book is that Quality is the primary source of how we see the world around us, outside both the object and the observer. The author states forcefully that Quality can’t be defined, but everyone knows what it is, at least if they have eyes to see it. He laments that too often we get fooled into thinking that style is quality. Quality can’t be defined as it’s all encompassing. The author compares Quality to God, stating that any attempt to describe it must by definition fail as the concept is just too big to ever be contained in mere words. Philosophical questions in the book routinely include a motorcycle analogy. The ruminations range from ghosts to technology, Eastern philosophy to empiricism, rationalism to rhetoric. …. the central thesis of the article, Quality, manages to be not only understandable but enjoyable and deeply thought-provoking.
http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=mgmt641

Considered a classic virtually from the day of publication , Zen and the Art is a complex, multileveled work that may require some meditation on to really appreciate. Pirsig has noted that his book was a 'culture-bearer', expressing a latent feeling many people had in the 1960s and 1970s that an exclusively rational way of seeing the world was too small a container. It had been adopted to ensure survival, but as the world had got richer, many people did not want to just survive. The book took on a larger conception of success that was not just about getting a good job, but being able to see differently. The sense of fragmentation and alienation felt by modern people had come from the classical belief that a person was fundamentally separate from the world around him or her. But such a concept is emotionally and spiritually hollow, and in the end makes us less human. ….

Much of the book focuses on a rather surprising topic: quality. We think of quality as a measure of a product or a person, and we feel the right to make judgments about it because it is clear when something is of quality or is not. …. [However] Quality cannot be defined in a rational way, it can only noticed when it happens. Yet quality is everything: the difference between someone who cares, and one who does not; between a machine that can enrich your life, and one that explodes into a heap of useless mental. Yet instruction manuals, the narrator observes, totally leave out of the picture the person who is putting something together. If you are angry or unmotivated, you will not succeed in tuning the machine or finding the problem, but if you patiently put your mind into the place of the original designer, you come to see that a machine is really just the physical expression of a set of ideas. Paradoxically, it is only when you go beyond the classical idea that we can separate our mind from the world, [it is only then] that 'objects' begin to come alive. Quality is appreciated not as a thing, but as the force that drives the universe. The narrator notes, "Obviously some things are better than others.but what's the 'betterness'?" His epiphany comes in reading the ancient Tao Te Ching, when he realizes that what we call Quality, or 'betterness', is the same as the Eastern concept of 'Tao', the universal power or essence which can never be identified as such, but whose presence or absence makes something good.

What Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance tells us is that we won't get to the truth about life through pursuing answers through the rational mind only. The narrator hungered for a rational explanation for everything, but in the end found that both science and philosophy are just maps of the truth. But in love of another person, or in the experience of nature or in a feeling of closeness to God, we can access truths that can't be broken down [ie rationally analyzed]. The book makes you think about the technological culture we live in and where we can find room in it for 'quality' and things of the spirit. It shows how a life drained of gumption is not really a life.

Zen and the Art does not say that reason is bad, only that it needs to expand to accommodate the irrational. If society could accept abstract art, hippies and beat novels, then maybe it could save itself from the dullness of its mental structures, which were after all an inheritance over two thousand years old. Paradoxically, acceptance of the 'unreasonable' provided the lifeblood to a culture based on reason.
http://www.butler-bowdon.com/robert-m-pirsig---zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance.html

Rethink The Philosophical Foundations Of Management, By Learning from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
By Thane Thomson

Robert Pirsig’s philosophy, woven into “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and its sequel “Lila”, could have profound effects on business and society, if understood and implemented correctly.
a) Problem
=>How does one overcome the short-term thinking that (stereotypically) permeates modern-day capitalism, and craft a way of doing “business” that is sustainable for the largest audience possible: humanity as a whole? .. What sort of paradigm shift would make this possible? I must warn readers that this essay might not be an easy one to digest, as it is quite difficult to undergo such a paradigm shift, but I believe that it is well worth the effort.
b) [Robert Pirsig Offers the Following] Solution
i) Introduction

ii) “Zen” and Quality

http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/learning-zen-and-art-motorcycle-maintenance
____

Resources For Further Reading:

Why Read ZMM, May Be Also Discerned By Looking For It, In My “What Is ZMM Really About” Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance “ by Henry S Gurr, ZMMQ Sitemaster.
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents/WhatZMMAbout
You May Also See Much of Why Read ZMM, By Reading-This-Into What Some of the 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

Some ZMM Readers Find ZMM Difficult. The Following TWO Links Offer My Guidance on Reading ZMM with Enjoyment and Lack of Frustration.

Some of the 4-Star & 5-Star Amazon ZMM Reviewers offer guidance for enjoyable reading of ZMM. And they also offer their ideas about the causes of frustration in reading ZMM. These are collected and collated here.
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/index.php?n=Documents.ReadZmmBestWay

My own suggestions as to what causes reader extreme dislike of ZMM are here.
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/index.php?n=Documents.GetOverDislikeZMM

My Modest Collection of "Best Books Lists".

Another Way to Learn How ZMM Is Received (by Literary Reviewers & the Public), Is to study how ZMM compares 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/

'Why Everyone Should Read Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. ''
''' From Villanova University. …. Take Pirsig's "ZMM" with a Side of Experience and Adventure
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/take-pirsigs-zen-art-motorcycle-maintenance-side-experience-adventure

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 is supported by Hopfield Theory: Our General Problem Solving Brain, Is Quality, Seeks Best:
http://venturearete.org/ResearchProjects/ProfessorGurr/Documents/JJHopfieldModelHumanBrainAsGenProbSolver

ByHenryGurr EditedByAndrewGeyer 24Sep10 RevHsg8Feb16;Hsg14Feb17
6Dec07
File = WikiZmmqWhyReadZmm}WtRmvd}WhtZmmRELyAbtHsg11Rpg01.doc