This summer, building on our list from last year, we’re offering reading recommendations for people to enjoy wherever and whenever they travel. This is the sixth in a series of posts from our in-house staff and editors. Enjoy.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
By Robert M. Pirsig
Have you ever read a book that felt like it changed your entire way of thinking? A book that, by the time you finished it, left you feeling like a different person than the one who cracked open the first page?
That book—and there have been a few—was, for me, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
I still remember the feeling I had that summer day more than 25 years ago. My father had given me the book when I was a young teenager and curious about many things: philosophy, physics, religion. (Many of the same things that I get to explore in my work with the John Templeton Foundation.)
Never before had I read a book like it. Part novel, part essay, part travelogue, it gave me, like millions of other readers since it was first published in 1974, an experience akin to a spiritual journey. It took me far into realms of abstraction, and back down into a realm of love.
This summer, I decided to revisit it. I have covered much ground since that first reading. Now a father of three myself, I have read many other books, and experienced many things. I wondered whether the book would still hold its power.
It does.
Whether you have read it already, or have never encountered it before, I heartily recommend Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to anyone who cares about ideas of how to live well and meaningfully in our world.
In other words, anyone who is reading Templeton Ideas.
Without spoiling anything, let me share one sample passage from this strange, beautiful book, which Robert Pirsig, its author, wrote during and after a motorcycle journey with his own son, Chris.
“I’ve wondered why it took us so long to catch on [to the charm of the backroads]. We saw it and yet we didn’t see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. … It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.”
This summer, answer the door.
