Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Few books have it in them to change thoughts. Few books carry so much meaning in so few pages. ZMM (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) is one of those few, lifetime books.

Had seen this book while I was at IIT either with Shashank or with Santosh. But, all I mistook it to be something similar to the monk who sold his ferrari.

May 2005: For years I had been unsuccessfully trying to evade through what I felt was the ultimate truth, the pointlessness or meaninglessness of everything. I had now accepted the fact but didn't know what to do now. At this juncture ZMM happened to me and my affair with book took-off. I was in hyderabad among my best buddies shashank, tushar and shashi when shashank probably felt that I needed the book. And he was right. There couldn't have been a better time in life to go through it.

<Warning: spoilers ahead (just for the sake of it.. go ahead, u won't find much anyway>
Started reading the book right there in hyderabad borrowing shashank's. Then bought one when in bangalore. I breezed through the first few pages. But, as I went on I realized some sort of confusion, some kind of haze surrounding the author. It was quite similar to what I have been feeling for too long and have been trying to run away from it. A bit more of reading and I felt that the author is also trying to escape the same very basic question 'WHY?'. He makes use of classical/romantic understanding fundae to justify it, though indirectly. Probably, they do make sense. Probably, this is the only way for humanity to grow.

I have read the book around one and half times (read once and revised parts of it once), but it has been more than a year since then. I can feel it calling me again. Would go through it again and may be my next review would be a li'l longer and may be will carry a bit more clarity.

PS:

• thank you shashank for recommending the book


• thanks sharaf for providing me the link to 'Pictures from Robert Pirsig's original 1968 trip'