Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance part 5

I feel like there are  more things than you can count that you have to form an opinion about.  Political issues, religious issues, philosophical issues, and many more.  I feel overwhelmed sometimes because I don't know where I stand on many of these things.  

Because of this, I used to think about each thing individually. For each issue, I would figure out what I thought and move on to the next one.  What I knew, but didn't realize, is that these issues all interconnect.  If I come across new ideas and they change my view point on one thing, then other things might change as well.  

This makes me want to spend hours just sitting and thinking about what I believe and how that affects my position on various subjects.  

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance this changing of ideas and positions has been an ongoing theme throughout the book.  The narrator starts with one view and then narrows it down, discovers new aspects or ways of thinking about it, changes views because of this new information, and discovers new aspects again.  He is not afraid to find a new viewpoint that might be better.  

Wood Sculpture

Made up of individual triangles stacked on top of each other.

We used 23 cans of spray paint to coat both the inside and the outside.

I admit it, we are the cause of global warming.

It is a little over 12 feet tall.

If you happen to be in Carlson Tower before Monday, October 3rd take a look.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance part 4

"The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans.  The present is our only reality.  The tree that are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore always unreal.  Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal.  Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place.  There is no other reality."

This seems a really fine way of cutting it.  Why is it worth it to think about these things?  Do they help us understand the world around us?
Does thinking about the past, present, and future this way redefine how I act or how I live?
Does it matter?
I'm not sure.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance part 3

Instead of talking about a quote or piece of text that really grabbed me, I wanted to talk about the scenery.  Especially in this part the scenery matches what he is talking about in the Chautauqua.  As he gets closer and closer to Phaedrus's breaking point in the Chautauqua, he and his son get closer and closer to the top of the mountain.  

There is an interesting point where they get above the tree line and he wants to head back down.  At the same time in the Chautauqua he leaves Phaedrus's line of thought and heads off on his own.  He is scared to pursue the things that destroyed him in the first place.  

 

Theatre Production: Little Room

In Theatre Production we made our first scale models.

 Little rooms.  1' = 1/4'' scale.

 They have a window and a door.

A little person lives inside.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Response 1

Hey Afreen,
In your post you mentioned your reaction to the slightly fuzzy beginning of the story.  I came to almost the same conclusions.  I think Phaedrus used to be him.  He doesn't have a split personality, he has a old and a new personality.
I do agree with you about the motorcycles.  While I feel that I am learning quite a bit more about how they work,  the reason I am interested in the story is the mystery of what happened to him.  I want to learn what happened.
Even though I want to know, it feels slightly rude to keep prying into why he is who he is.  Yes, it is in a book, but it is written in such a way that you have to pry to find out.
  

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance part 2

"Quality... you now what it is, yet you don't know what it is.  But that's self-contradictory.  But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality.  But when you try to say what Quality is apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof!  There's nothing to talk about.  But if you can't say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists?" - Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Is he right?  Is defining Quality really that hard?
I can provide many examples of why one thing is better than another, but is that quality or opinion?  Maybe quality is in the eye of the beholder.  This would make sense because then we would all define it differently.  There wouldn't be one definition of quality.  You might think that one movie is better than another.  I might disagree completely.
If that is the case then the definition of quality would be something like this.  Quality is your opinion of how much better one object/idea is than another. 

How would you define quality?