This article is 2300 words and takes 6 minutes to read
A while ago, Xiaobian once made a push called Don't Do Title Party, and these good books are even wonderful titles! A reader in the comments section recommended "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
This book, the title is strange, the content is wonderful.
The author, Robert M. Posig, is a freak who entered university at the age of 15, studied chemistry, philosophy, and communication, and worked as a university professor, but was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression, and was sent to the hospital several times.
In 1968, he set out from Twin Cities on a motorcycle with his eldest son, Chris, on a spiritual expedition through the Midwest wilderness, the Rocky Mountains, and the West Coast. He began this long-distance brigade across the continental United States in the hope of liberation from a narrow and limited self. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair" is a retrospective of this trip.
There is a sentence in the book that summarizes the main idea: "The operation of the motorcycle is completely in accordance with the process of reasoning, and the study of the art of repairing the motorcycle is the epitome of the study of the art of reason." The author thinks philosophically about everything he experiences during his journey, using cycling, repairing bicycles, mountaineering, etc. as metaphors to explain the essence of life.
Xiaobian excerpted some of the content from the book, let's read it together.
Movie "Motorcycle Diaries"
I don't want to rush
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We deliberately avoid following a fixed itinerary, preferring to stop and go as we please, because travel itself is far more comfortable than rushing to a destination. Now we're on vacation and want to take a walk on the side roads, the cobblestone country roads are the best choice, then the interstate arteries, and the highways are the next choice. We plan to enjoy the scenery along the way, so enjoy the journey instead of rushing. In this way, the whole way changes.
Unless you like to shout loudly, you rarely talk along the way, and the main energy is spent on watching the scenery and contemplating, thinking about what you saw and heard, seeing how the sky was, or reminiscing about the past, occasionally looking at the condition of the motorcycle, and admiring the countryside we came to. Days are so casual, forget the time, no one will urge you, and don't worry about wasting time.
I would like to share my thoughts. We are always busy, we don't have time to talk properly, and we end up living a boring life day after day, so monotonous that people can't help but wonder where time has gone after a few years, and at the same time regret its passing.
I don't want to rush, because rush itself is a twenty-century attitude that is unavoidable. When you do something, once you want to ask for it fast, it means that you don't care about it anymore and just want to do something else. So I wanted to take it slowly, carefully and thoroughly, with the attitude with which I found the cut pin. With this attitude, the reason can be discovered, and there is no other way.
Movie "Crossing Darjeeling"
All you want is to be there
The storm is coming, and perhaps it is this thing that has always bothered me, and I deliberately do not think about it, but I have long known that under this humidity and wind speed, the storm is very likely to come. It was so bad that on the first day of the road there was bad weather. However, I have premised that motorcycle travel is about being there, not being on the sidelines, and that storms are an inevitable part of the equation.
I hope she will gradually see and feel something from this meadow, something that I have long since stopped telling anyone. Only in this endless savannah can you find it, and only when other disturbances disappear will you be able to see it more easily. She was often depressed by the monotony of city life, and perhaps the endless prairie and long winds made her understand that when you accept the monotony and boredom, you can see that there is another meaning behind it. It's here, and I can't name it.
In many Zen books and the records of the world's major religions, we will find such mountains and mountaineers, and the stories of what happened to them. Physical mountains often symbolize the path of spiritual growth. It was as if those in the valley behind us, most of them looked at the spiritual peak, but had never climbed it in their lives, just listening to the experience of others was satisfied, and they were not willing to spend any effort.
Others rely on experienced guides who know the safest way to get to their destination. But there is another group of people who are not only inexperienced, but also do not trust the experience of others and want to go out of their own way. Few of them succeed, but some do it by their own will, luck, and divine grace. Those who succeed understand better than others that there is no unique or fixed route for mountaineering, and there are as many roads as there are such people.
Movie "On the Road"
Don't carry your anger on your back
As you walk farther and farther in the mountains, the desire to take risks is gradually replaced by the need for safety, the mountains are dangerous, and even if you take a wrong step and twist your ankles, you will feel isolated from the civilized world.
If you make it your goal to climb to the top, you will be much harder, and this is only the nominal goal, the real goal, is to experience every minute of the climb, and it is much more pleasant to reach the top of the mountain. We climbed up slowly, not carrying our anger on our backs.
Science and faith
At this time, alcohol, tiredness and breeze entangled in my heart, together affecting me, I said: "Of course, scientific theorems do not occupy any space, nor energy, so they only exist in people's minds, so the attitude of complete science is to neither believe in ghosts nor science, so you are safe." However, in this way, you don't have much to believe, but only this is the attitude of science. ”
It is easy for us to attack the ghosts that others believe in with arrogance and conceit, but we are very ignorant and blindly believing in the ghosts in our own hearts.
The nature of the phenomenon
This result confirmed a long-standing intuition that the smarter and more serious students were, the less they needed grades, most likely because they were more interested in the learning itself. The lazier and more stupid the student, the more they need points, because they can know if they have passed.
If they were to demolish a factory or rebel against the government or not repair a motorcycle because they were systems, it was only the result of the attack and not the cause of it. If you only touch on the outcome of the problem without knowing where the cause is, nothing can change.
The real system, the real system, is our current view of the system, that is, the rationality itself. If the whole factory is demolished, and the rationality that frames it remains, it is easy to build another factory by virtue of this reason. If the revolution can destroy a government, but the rationality behind the government is still intact, then the same government can soon be established. We talk so much about the system, but we still don't know enough about the system.
This is called a motorcycle, which is a system of ideas composed of a set of steel parts, in which any part, any shape, is designed by people.
Let's talk
What particular books have you read?
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