Author:: [[Robert M. Pirsig]] DateFinished:: 09/26/2024 Rating:: 9 Tags:: #📩 #🟥 # Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance  ## 🚀The Book in 3 Sentences - You can practice spirituality in any activity, whether fixing the gears on a motorcycle, or writing an essay for class. - Navigating the modern world requires balancing classic and romantic notions of living together in the pursuit of Quality. - How can we learn to stay our best selves—in tune of Quality—while navigating the chaos of the day to day? ### 🎨 Impressions - Woah. This book is a lot… It’s got so much packed into it in so little time (despite being 400) pages long. I needed to read the guide book as well as a number of other secondary resources to start wrapping my head around it. I’d like to read some other resources after finishing it as well to understand it even better. This is a book I must return to over and over again before finally understanding. I like the narrative style combined with chataquas. I’m increasingly convinced this is how I want to write my books. Narrative interspersed with research and analysis. But I don’t think I want them in the same chapter. I want them separate. It could get confusing having them in the same chapter. ### 📖Who Should Read It? - Anyone who has entered the spiritual path. This is not a book I would read right away. You need some background in Eastern and Western spirituality. ### ☘️ How the Book Changed Me - Major thing was making me more attentive to my mindset in every activity I come to. I’m more aware of how to stay in Gumption as I go about my day. # Linked Book Notes - [[Enlightenment in the East versus the West]] - [[Meditations on journeys]] - [[The map of a journey doesn’t encapsulate the experience of journey itself]] - [[What works for one journey might not work for another]] - [[Often after taking a journey you realize what you needed was in you all along]] - [[What is needed during one part of the journey often isn’t required during other parts]] - [[Symbolic thought is required to reach non symbolic awareness]] - [[The harder you reach for enlightenment the harder it is to attain]] - [[Nishkama kara]] - [[Meditation isn’t isolated to the meditation practice.]] - [[You can build towards enlightenment anywhere doing anything]] - [[External experience and internal experience are intertwined. By practicing on one you can practice on the other.]] - [[The answer to modernity isn’t a hut in the woods]] - [[Building love in the world begins by building love in yourself]] - [[The will to knowing]] - [[People have forgotten how to have a good time]] - [[You can practice spirituality in every action]] - [[Quality]] - [[Good is above reason and rationality]] - [[How do you teach Quality to people]] - [[On ego climbing versus spiritual climbing]] - [[Classical versus romantic conceptions of living]] - [[Our perception of reality is transjective]] - [[Practicing Zen is more like going into a valley than climbing a mountain]] - [[How can we stay in tune with gumption]] ## Highlights It was some years ago that my wife and I and our friends first began to catch on to these roads. We took them once in a while for variety or for a shortcut to another main highway, and each time the scenery was grand and we left the road with a feeling of relaxation and enjoyment. We did this time after time before realizing what should have been obvious: these roads are truly different from the main ones. The whole pace of life and personality of the people who live along them are different. They’re not going anywhere. They’re not too busy to be courteous. The hereness and nowness of things is something they know all about. It’s the others, the ones who moved to the cities years ago and their lost offspring, who have all but forgotten it. The discovery was a real find. ([Location 181](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0026772N8&location=181)) It’s not the motorcycle maintenance, not the faucet. It’s all of technology they can’t take. And then all sorts of things started tumbling into place and I knew that was it. Sylvia’s irritation at a friend who thought computer programming was “creative.” All their drawings and paintings and photographs without a technological thing in them. 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. Of course John signs off every time the subject of cycle repair comes up, even when it is obvious he is suffering for it. That’s technology. And sure, of course, obviously. It’s so simple when you see it. To get away from technology out into the country in the fresh air and sunshine is why they are on the motorcycle in the first place. For me to bring it back to them just at the point and place where they think they have finally escaped it just frosts both of them, tremendously. That’s why the conversation always breaks and freezes when the subject comes up. ([Location 342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0026772N8&location=342)) ## New highlights added 16-08-2024 at 8:45 AM It seems to me that law of gravity has passed every test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a single attribute of nonexistence that the law of gravity didn’t have. Or a single scientific attribute of existence it did have. And yet it is still ‘common sense’ to believe that it existed.” John says, “I guess I’d have to think about it.” “Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself going round and round and round and round until you finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense. “And what that means,” I say before he can interrupt, “and what that means is that the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people’s heads! It’s a ghost! We are all of us very arrogant and conceited about running down other people’s ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own.” “Why does everybody believe in the law of gravity then?” “Mass hypnosis. In a very orthodox form known as ‘education.’” ([Location 623](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0026772N8&location=623)) ## Highlights And it occurred to me there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance, the most important aspect of all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j6tcr2gwwk08zqkycvpqytae)) When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j6tcrszsb5j8qjy13v42pq1p)) ``Of course,'' I add, ``the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people's minds. It's best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you're safe. That doesn't leave you very much to believe in, but that's scientific too.'' ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j6td701whsyeab8setdj9fah)) ## New highlights added 04-09-2024 at 4:15 PM My own opinion is that the intellect of modern man isn't that superior. IQs aren't that much different. Those Indians and medieval men were just as intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought was completely different. Within that context of thought, ghosts and spirits are quite as real as atoms, particles, photons and quants are to a modern man. In that sense I believe in ghosts. Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know.'' ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j6wybdad7b52j8abcr36bsqh)) A copy of Thoreau's Walden -- which Chris has never heard and which can be read a hundred times without exhaustion. I try always to pick a book far over his head and read it as a basis for questions and answers, rather than without interruption. I read a sentence or two, wait for him to come up with his usual barrage of questions, answer them, then read another sentence or two. Classics read well this way. They must be written this way. Sometimes we have spent a whole evening reading and talking and discovered we have only covered two or three pages. It's a form of reading done a century ago -- when Chautauquas were popular. Unless you've tried it you can't imagine how pleasant it is to do it this way. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j6wz5dst6ea3bdswrzv9738a)) - Note: I want to read like this some time with a friend. I talked yesterday about caring, I care about these moldy old riding gloves. I smile at them flying through the breeze beside me because they have been there for so many years and are so old and so tired and so rotten there is something kind of humorous about them. They have become filled with oil and sweat and dirt and spattered bugs and now when I set them down flat on a table, even when they are not cold, they won't stay flat. They've got a memory of their own. They cost only three dollars and have been restitched so many times it is getting impossible to repair them, yet I take a lot of time and pains to do it anyway because I can't imagine any new pair taking their place. That is impractical, but practicality isn't the whole thing with gloves or with anything else. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j6wzf9x7v9ek0d1dagv3grgw)) - Note: Things have tremendous meaning. Reminds me of The Meaning of Things. It was cold all right, but not that cold. How do John and Sylvia ever get through Minnesota winters? I wonder. There's kind of a glaring inconsistency here, that's almost too obvious to dwell on. If they can't stand physical discomfort and they can't stand technology, they've got a little compromising to do. They depend on technology and condemn it at the same time. I'm sure they know that and that just contributes to their dislike of the whole situation. They're not presenting a logical thesis, they're just reporting how it is. But three farmers are coming into town now, rounding the corner in that brand-new pickup truck. I'll bet with them it's just the other way around. They're going to show off that truck and their tractor and that new washing machine and they'll have the tools to fix them if they go wrong, and know how to use the tools. They value technology. And they're the ones who need it the least. If all technology stopped, tomorrow, these people would know how to make out. It would be rough, but they'd survive. John and Sylvia and Chris and I would be dead in a week. This condemnation of technology is ingratitude, that's what it is. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j6wzt7p3xj2b9cxvp6ee3ype)) - Note: When you depend completely on something, it’s easy to forget it’s there. It falls into the background. You can become ungrateful. What emerged in vague form at first and then in sharper outline was the explanation that I had been seeing that shim in a kind of intellectual, rational, cerebral way in which the scientific properties of the metal were all that counted. John was going at it immediately and intuitively, grooving on it. I was going at it in terms of underlying form. He was going at it in terms of immediate appearance. I was seeing what the shim meant. He was seeing what the shim was. That's how I arrived at that distinction. And when you see what the shim is,in this case, it's depressing. Who likes to think of a beautiful precision machine fixed with an old hunk of junk? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j6x0v3a6afykxcb0haz5y785)) ## New highlights added 05-09-2024 at 6:56 AM ``I don't know why -- it's just that -- I don't know -- they're not kin.'' -- Surprising word, I think to myself never used it before. Not of kin -- sounds like hillbilly talk -- not of a kind -- same root -- kindness, too -- they can't have real kindness toward him, they're not his kin -- . That's exactly the feeling. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j6zk58vv31p6cd9dksebnejz)) - Note: There’s something special about family that you can’t get with just friends and lovers. Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of a ``knack'' or some kind of ``affinity for machines'' in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a ``short between the earphones,'' failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j6zpf6vwbs59cg9hv35zzj8w)) ## New highlights added 09-09-2024 at 7:37 AM What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the ever changing data of the senses. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j79rmdqt8s1qp3rndeg80f22)) - Note: Not all knowledge is created by experience. Knowledge BEGINS with experience, but isn't caused by it. We have a priori knowledge that interacts with sense says to crate meaning from experience. A human is born immediately looking and attaching to a mother figure. It doesn't need experience for it to do this. It has a a priori knowledge to do so. For this reason, reality is in our mind, but there does exist a reality outside of it. It's just influenced by our mind to never perfectly mimick the infinity that is reality. Kant called his thesis that our a priori thoughts are independent of sense data and screen what we see a Copernican revolution.'' By this he referred to Copernicus' statement that the earth moves around the sun. Nothing changed as a result of this revolution, and yet everything changed. Or, to put it in Kantian terms, the objective world producing our sense data did not change, but our a priori concept of it was turned inside out. The effect was overwhelming. It was the acceptance of the Copernican revolution that distinguishes modern man from his medieval predecessors. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j79rzrzzphmvtwtcg1gg512h)) - Note: We take for granted ways of thinking ingrained into us by previous human working. Kant felt he had done the same thing in metaphysics. If you presume that the a priori concepts in our heads are independent of what we see and actually screen what we see, this means that you are taking the old Aristotelian concept of scientific man as a passive observer, a ``blank tablet,'' and truly turning this concept inside out. Kant and his millions of followers have maintained that as a result of this inversion you get a much more satisfying understanding of how we know things. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j79rzk02bhgqhhfr0fk6yan0)) doctrinal differences among Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j79sx3a6a0rjh58x7zjarc65)) ## New highlights added 11-09-2024 at 3:51 PM Technology presumes there's just one right way to do things and there never is. And when you presume there's just one right way to do things, of course the instructions begin and end exclusively with the rotisserie. But if you have to choose among an infinite number of ways to put it together then the relation of the machine to you, and the relation of the machine and you to the rest of the world, has to be considered, because the selection from many choices, the art of the work is just as dependent upon your own mind and spirit as it is upon the material of the machine. That's why you need the peace of mind.'' ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j7f41a4m8yg3v9q9q61kgyzz)) ``Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you'll see the difference. The craftsman isn't ever following a single line of instruction. He's making decisions as he goes along. For that reason he'll be absorbed and attentive to what he's doing even though he doesn't deliberately contrive this. His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony. He isn't following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are changing together in a progression of changes until his mind's at rest at the same time the material's right.'' ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j7f42f0hhn1gnebc9rvcpea9)) - Note: This is how I feel writing. I never know exactly where I’ll end up. The writing unfolds as time goes on. I’d I was too prescriptive it wouldn’t be art. ## New highlights added 15-09-2024 at 4:28 PM To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical. Both kinds of climbers place one foot in front of the other. Both breathe in and out at the same rate. Both stop when tired. Both go forward when rested. But what a difference! The ego-climber is like an instrument that's out of adjustment. He puts his foot down an instant too soon or too late. He's likely to miss a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees. He goes on when the sloppiness of his step shows he's tired. He rests at odd times. He looks up the trail trying to see what's ahead even when he knows what's ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He's here but he's not here. 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". What he's looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it is all around him. Every step's an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant. That seems to be Chris's problem now. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j7v3knvybp482bf40ypstvmy)) Phædrus' refusal to define Quality, in terms of this analogy, was an attempt to break the grip of the classical sandsifting mode of understanding and find a point of common understanding between the classic and romantic worlds. Quality, the cleavage term between hip and square, seemed to be it. Both worlds used the term. Both knew what it was. It was just that the romantic left it alone and appreciated it for what it was and the classic tried to turn it into a set of intellectual building blocks for other purposes. Now, with the definition blocked, the classic mind was forced to view Quality as the romantic did, undistorted by thought structures. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j7v4d8f2p9fzd11yymepbda7)) ## New highlights added 17-09-2024 at 7:30 PM And so: he rejected the left horn. Quality is not objective, he said. It doesn't reside in the material world. Then: he rejected the right horn. Quality is not subjective, he said. It doesn't reside merely in the mind. And finally: Phædrus, following a path that to his knowledge had never been taken before in the history of Western thought, went straight between the horns of the subjectivity-objectivity dilemma and said Quality is neither a part of mind, nor is it a part of matter. It is a third entity which is independent of the two. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j80ajr4qk2bxs8qm6wtv4k1h)) - Note: Transjective I don't know how much thought passed before he arrived at this, but eventually he saw that Quality couldn't be independently related with either the subject or the object but could be found only in the relationship of the two with each other. It is the point at which subject and object meet. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j80asqv5neaxn8g0b6emntn6)) The title of this Chautauqua is ``Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,'' not ``Zen and the Art of Mountain Climbing,'' and there are no motorcycles on the tops of mountains, and in my opinion very little Zen. Zen is the ``spirit of the valley,'' not the mountaintop. The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. Let's get out of here. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j80b8vd0f4xtye25zj5kryfs)) - Note: Why is Zen more like going to the valley? It requires a submission of ego. The ego is attracted to surmounting things, to progress, when progress is often going backwards. The basket is where people live and do their everyday actions. Not mountains. Zen is being present in the everyday, not in the small moments of climbing a mountain. This Zen is in the valley. Zen is going with the flow of life. Things flow from mountains to valleys, not the other way around. The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is 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 preintellectual reality is what Phædrus felt he had properly identified as Quality. Since all intellectually identifiable things must emerge from this preintellectual reality, Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j80bjvmvd1k7sc3g5gkvkne9)) - Note: De fuck. This, he said, explains why a classful of freshman composition students arrives at similar ratings of Quality in the compositions. They all have relatively similar backgrounds and similar knowledge. But if a group of foreign students were brought in, or, say, medieval poems out of the range of class experience were brought in, then the students' ability to rank Quality would probably not correlate as well. In a sense, he said, it's the student's choice of Quality that defines him. People differ about Quality, not because Quality is different, but because people are different in terms of experience. He speculated that if two people had identical a priori analogues they would see Quality identically every time. There was no way to test this, however, so it had to remain just speculation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j80bvsv4a2j0ggnt8nwdw1ep)) This, he said, explains why a classful of freshman composition students arrives at similar ratings of Quality in the compositions. They all have relatively similar backgrounds and similar knowledge. But if a group of foreign students were brought in, or, say, medieval poems out of the range of class experience were brought in, then the students' ability to rank Quality would probably not correlate as well. In a sense, he said, it's the student's choice of Quality that defines him. People differ about Quality, not because Quality is different, but because people are different in terms of experience. He speculated that if two people had identical a priori analogues they would see Quality identically every time. There was no way to test this, however, so it had to remain just speculation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j80bw3r4rhsyt8af662dnsd5)) - Note: Organism environment relationship. A person filled with gumption doesn't sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He's at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what's up the track and meeting it when it comes. That's gumption. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8dqh8sqabvn25nea535qadr)) The gumption-filling process occurs when one is quiet long enough to see and hear and feel the real universe, not just one's own stale opinions about it. But it's nothing exotic. That's why I like the word. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8dqhjdaaxvr142p1s74bf1d)) You see it often in people who return from long, quiet fishing trips. Often they're a little defensive about having put so much time to ``no account'' because there's no intellectual justification for what they've been doing. But the returned fisherman usually has a peculiar abundance of gumption, usually for the very same things he was sick to death of a few weeks before. He hasn't been wasting time. It's only our limited cultural viewpoint that makes it seem so. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8dqhp0c6rfqax8m68fej1w2)) There are hundreds of different kinds of gumption traps, maybe thousands, maybe millions. I have no way of knowing how many I don't know. I know it seems as though I've stumbled into every kind of gumption trap imaginable. What keeps me from thinking I've hit them all is that with every job I discover more. Motorcycle maintenance gets frustrating. Angering. Infuriating. That's what makes it interesting. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8dqqdptd9k1vrejta8vg8f3)) What I have in mind now is a catalog of ``Gumption Traps I Have Known.'' I want to start a whole new academic field, gumptionology, in which these traps are sorted, classified, structured into hierarchies and interrelated for the edification of future generations and the benefit of all mankind. Gumptionology 101...An examination of affective, cognitive and psychomotor blocks in the perception of Quality relationships...3 cr,Vll,MWF. I'd like to see that in a college catalog somewhere. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8dqq8yj5qhqz4py72f8yd69)) a gumption trap, consequently, can be defined as anything that causes one to lose sight of Quality, and thus lose one's enthusiasm for what one is doing. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8dqqz6t4r6zfz9ctf9q5ec0)) As the course description of gumptionology indicated, this internal part of the field can be broken down into three main types of internal gumption traps: those that block affective understanding, called ``value traps''; those that block cognitive understanding, called ``truth traps''; and those that block psychomotor behavior, called ``muscle traps.'' The value traps are by far the largest and the most dangerous group. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8dre05aj70w15ydn5kzf4v0)) Of the value traps, the most widespread and pernicious is value rigidity. This is an inability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values. In motorcycle maintenance, you must rediscover what you do as you go. Rigid values make this impossible. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8dre5hmh1v0xq8amjwkegp0)) 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's nothing wrong with that. Just live with it for a while. Watch it the way you watch a line when fishing and before long, as sure as you live, you'll get a little nibble, a little fact asking in a timid, humble way if you're interested in it. That's the way the world keeps on happening. Be interested in it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8drmhc6zxqt55dneegdbzep)) All kinds of examples from cycle maintenance could be given, but the most striking example of value rigidity I can think of is the old South Indian Monkey Trap, which depends on value rigidity for its effectiveness. The trap consists of a hollowed-out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside which can be grabbed through a small hole. 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gc1k388kvt1z0sqnayn597)) The next one is important. It's the internal gumption trap of ego. Ego isn't entirely separate from value rigidity but one of the many causes of it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gcc3pvyfhqv9dmdjwn22sb)) Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than ``laziness,'' is the real reason you find it hard to get started. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gcdpzg7pt6mdmhwybntc2z)) Boredom is the next gumption trap that comes to mind. This is the opposite of anxiety and commonly goes with ego problems. Boredom means you're off the Quality track, you're not seeing things freshly, you've lost your ``beginner's mind'' and your motorcycle is in great danger. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gcez9ecrabm6zvs3pqjbma)) Impatience is best handled by allowing an indefinite time for the job, particularly new jobs that require unfamiliar techniques; by doubling the allotted time when circumstances force time planning; and by scaling down the scope of what you want to do. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gckdxxgsxqxf1xhyt1kkak)) I want to talk now about truth traps and muscle traps and then stop this Chautauqua for today. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gctjf3qj3a9s9ymg8t73ea)) Truth traps are concerned with data that are apprehended and are within the boxcars of the train. For the most part these data are properly handled by conventional dualistic logic and the scientific method talked about earlier, back just after Miles City. But there's one trap that isn't...the truth trap of yes-no logic. Yes and no -- this or that -- one or zero. On the basis of this elementary two-term discrimination, all human knowledge is built up. The demonstration of this is the computer memory which stores all its knowledge in the form of binary information. It contains ones and zeros, that's all. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gctqdh76tfc1gmx4sfp55a)) Mu means ``no thing.'' Like ``Quality'' it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, ``No class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no.'' It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. ``Unask the question'' is what it says. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gcswvnjc3t377yqmjr1k1s)) This low evaluation of the experiment which provided the mu answer isn't justified. The mu answer is an important one. It's told the scientist that the context of his question is too small for nature's answer and that he must enlarge the context of the question. That is a very important answer! His understanding of nature is tremendously improved by it, which was the purpose of the experiment in the first place. A very strong case can be made for the statement that science grows by its mu answers more than by its yes or no answer. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gcy95g9s7q8prk8c02s49e)) Time to switch to the psychomotor traps. This is the domain of understanding which is most directly related to what happens to the machine. Here by far the most frustrating gumption trap is inadequate tools. Nothing's quite so demoralizing as a tool hang-up. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gd22x41k10d1rh5xhk72vz)) Apart from bad tools, bad surroundings are a major gumption trap. Pay attention to adequate lighting. It's amazing the number of mistakes a little light can prevent. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gd2brzs5ta3k186t196gd9)) The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be ``out there'' and the person that appears to be ``in here'' are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8gd7fh02dtqz4s1060jc3x0)) We see much more of this loneliness now. It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest. Back where people were so spread out in western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much. The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are big but the psychic distances between people are small, and here it's reversed. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j8k0gmw4mn5kdjq8qvmne8cn))