Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things—it fits.

What you have to do, if you get caught in this gumption trap of value rigidity, is slow down—you’re going to have to slow down anyway whether you want to or not—but slow down deliberately and go over ground that you’ve been over before to see if the things you thought were important were really important and to…well…just stare at the machine. There

classic understanding should not be overlaid with romantic prettiness; classic and romantic understanding should be united at a basic level.

I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn’t mean much.

Of course she’s not going to get mad at that faucet, I thought. You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate.

The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling.

The hole is big enough so that the monkey’s hand can go in, but too small for his fist with rice in it to come out. The monkey reaches in and is suddenly trapped—by nothing more than his own value rigidity. He can’t revalue the rice. He cannot see that freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it.

He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here.”

Critique of Pure Reason,