Death revisited
So I finished reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (1974) again. I must say that this is really a fantastic book. And I was really affected by the “Afterword” which was a word from the Author (Robert M. Pirsig) written about 10 years later. Here’s the part that is really thought provoking…
The receding Ancient Greek perspective of the past ten years has a very dark side: Chris (his son and character in the book) is dead.
He was murdered. At about 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 17, 1979, in San Francisco, he left the Zen Center, where he was a student, to visit a friend’s house a block away on Haight Street.
…
I go on living, more from force of habit than anything else.
…
After his funeral we packed all his things, including a secondhand motorcycle he had just bought, into an old pickup truck and headed back across some of the western mountain and desert roads described in this book. At this time of year the mountain forests and prairies were snow-covered and alone and beautiful.
…
I tend to become taken with philosophical questions, going over them and over them and over them again in loops that go round and round and round until they either produce an answer or become so repetitively locked on they become psychiatrically dangerous, and now the question became obsessive: “Where did he go?”
Where did Chris go? He had bought an airplane ticket that morning. he had a bank account, drawers full of clothes, and shelves full of books. He was a real, live person, occupying time and space on this planet, and now suddenly where was he gone to? Did he go up the stack at the crematorium? Was he in the little box of bones they handed back? Was he strumming a harp of gold on some overhead cloud? None of these answers made any sense.
It had to be asked: What was it I was so attached to? Is it just something in the imagination? When you have done time in a mental hospital, that is never a trivial question. If he wasn’t just imaginary, then where did he go? Do real things just disappear like that? If they do, then the conservation laws of physics are in trouble. But if we stay with the laws of physics, then the Chris that disappeared was unreal. Round and round and round. He used to run off like that just to make me mad. Sooner or later he would always appear, but where would he appear now? After all, really, where did he go?
…
Now Chris’s body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. But the larger pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the center of it, and that was what caused all the heartache.
It goes on, and is more detailed, but this is really the part that affected me most.
I still miss you dad.
that this is really a fantastic book. And I was really affected by the “Afterword” which was a
word from the Author (Robert M. Pirsig) written about 10 years later. Here’s the part that is
really thought provoking…
The receding Ancient Greek perspective of the past ten years has a very dark side:
Chris (his son and character in the book) is dead.
He was murdered. At about 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 17, 1979, in San Francisco,
he left the Zen Center, where he was a student, to visit a friend’s house a block away on
Haight Street.
…
I go on living, more from force of habit than anything else.
…
After his funeral we packed all his things, including a secondhand motorcycle he had
just bought, into an old pickup truck and headed back across some of the western mountain and
desert roads described in this book. At this time of year the mountain forests and prairies
were snow-covered and alone and beautiful.
…
I tend to become taken with philosophical questions, going over them and over them and
over them again in loops that go round and round and round until they either produce an answer
or become so repetitively locked on they become psychiatrically dangerous, and now the question
became obsessive: “Where did he go?”
Where did Chris go? He had bought an airplane ticket that morning. he had a bank
account, drawers full of clothes, and shelves full of books. He was a real, live person,
occupying time and space on this planet, and now suddenly where was he gone to? Did he go up
the stack at the crematorium? Was he in the little box of bones they handed back? Was he
strumming a harp of gold on some overhead cloud? None of these answers made any sense.
It had to be asked: What was it I was so attached to? Is it just something in the
imagination? When you have done time in a mental hospital, that is never a trivial question.
If he wasn’t just imaginary, then where did he go? Do real things just disappear like that?
If they do, then the conservation laws of physics are in trouble. But if we stay with the laws
of physics, then the Chris that disappeared was unreal. Round and round and round. He used to
run off like that just to make me mad. Sooner or later he would always appear, but where would
he appear now? After all, really, where did he go?
…
Now Chris’s body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. But the larger
pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the center of it, and that was what caused
all the heartache.
It goes on, and is more detailed, but this is really the part that affected me most.
I still miss you dad.
nice to see at last i am not alone.