Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance-excerpts 3

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Any effort that has self glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. Now we are paying the price. When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are , you almost never make it. And even if you do it’s a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory, you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true an someone will find out. That’s never the way.

To the untrained eye, ego climbing and self less 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 show 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 becaue it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goals to be external and distant.
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Of the value traps, the most widespread an pernicious is value rigidity. This is an ability to revalue what one sees because of commitment to previous values. In motorcycle maintenance, you must rediscover what you do as you go. Right values makes that impossible. If your values are rigid, you cant really learn new facts.
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 have 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 an 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.
South Indian Monkey trap, an example of value rigidity
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. He can’t revalue the rice. He cannot see the freedom without rice is more valuable than capture with it.
There is a fact that this monkey should know: if he opens his hand he’s free. But how is he going to discover this fact ? By removing the value rigidity that rates rice above freedom. How is he going to do that ? Well, he should somehow try to slow down deliberately and go over ground that he has been over before and see if things he thought were important really were important, an, well stop yanking and just stare at the coconut for a while. Before long he should get a nibble from a little fact wondering if he is interested in it. He should try to understand this fact not so much in terms of his big problem as for its own sake. That problem may not be as big as he thinks it is. That fact may not be as small as he thinks it is either. That’s about all the general information you can give him.

Ego Trap: if you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened. Your ego isolates you from the quality reality. When the facts show that you’ve just goofed, you’re not as likely to admit it. When false information makes you look good, you’re likely to believe it. Mechanics tend to be modest and quiet. There are exceptions, but generally if they’re not quiet and modest at first, the work seems to make them that way. And skeptical, Attentive, but skeptical. But not egoistic.

Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of 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. This gumption trap of anxiety which results from over motivation, can lead to all kinds of errors of excessive fussiness.
The best way to break this cycle, I think, is to work out your anxieties on paper. Read every book and magazine you can on the subject. Your anxiety makes this easy and the more you read the more you calm down. You should remember that its peace of mind you’re after and not just a fixed machine.

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. Boredom means your gumption supply is low and must be replenished before anything else is done.
When you’re bored, stop! Go to a show. Turn on the TV. Call it a day. Do anything but work on the machine. If you don’t stop, the next thing that happens is the Big Mistake, and then all the boredom plus the Big Mistake combine together in one Sunday punch to knock all the gumption out of you and you are really stopped.
Impatience is close to boredom but always results from one cause: an underestimation of the amount of time the job will take. You will never really know what will come up an very few jobs get done as quickly as planned. Impatience is the first reaction against a setback and can soon turn to anger if you’re not careful.
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.
Overall goals must be scaled down in importance and immediate goals, must be scaled up. This requires value flexibility , and the value shift is usually accompanied by some loss of gumption, but it’s a sacrifice that must be made.
Apart from bad tools, bad surroundings are a major gumption trap.

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Or if he takes whatever dull job he’s stuck with – and they are all, sooner or later, dull – and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he’s likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others too because the quality tends to fan out like waves. The quality job he didn’t think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, an in that way the quality tends to keep on going.

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The Illiad is the story of the siege of Troy, which will fall in the dust, an of its defenders who will all be killed in battle. The wife of Hector, the leader, says to him: ‘Your strength will be your destruction, and you have no pity either for your infant son or for your unhappy wife who will soon be your widow. For soon the Acheans will set upon you and kill you; and if I lose you it would be better for me to die.’

Her husband replies:
‘Well do I know this, and I am sure of it: that day is coming when the holy city of Troy will perish, and Priam and the people of wealthy Prima. But my grief is not so much for the Trojans, nor for Hecuba herself, nor for Priam the King, nor for my many noble brothers, who will be slain by the foe, and will lie in the dust, as for you, when one of the bronze-clad Acheans will carry you away in tears an end your days of freedom. Then you may live in Argos, and work at the loom in another woman’s house, or perhaps carry water for a woman of Messene or Hyperia, sore against your will: but hard compulsion will lie upon you. And then a man willsay as he sees you weeping, “ This was the wife of Hector, who was the noblest in battle of the horse taming Trojans, when they were fighting around Illion” This is what they will say: and it will be fresh grief for you, to fight against slavery bereft of a husband like that. But may I be dead, may the earth be heaped over my grave before I hear your cries, and of the violence done to you’.
What moves the Greek warrior to deeds of heroism is not a sense of duty as we understand it- duty towards others, it is rather duty towards himself. He strives after that which we translate “virtue” but in Greek arête, “excellence” – this is the definition of quality.