CL Pauwels at Large

I was eager to revisit Robert Pirsig’s writings when I picked up On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence. This relatively slim volume (133 pages vs. 430 pages in my copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values and 468 pages in my copy of Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals) was compiled by Wendy Pirsig, his wife from 1978 until his death in 2017. The tagline “Unpublished and Selected Writings” was promising, but the result was uneven.

Several sections culled from Zen and Lila were welcome reminders of why I enjoy those books, and of how dense Pirsig’s writing can be. In that respect, On Quality was a worthwhile experience. His view of learning/understanding: “One first senses that some new experience is meaningful, and then, because of that sense, tries to ‘understand’ it – that is, contain it within existing intellectual or mathematical patterns” (84).

Pirsig’s efforts to equate his capital-q Quality with the Tao, the Upanishads, and Buddhism neatly tied my Eastern philosophy studies together with his ubiquitous “Quality/quality”: “The direct perception of pure Dynamic Quality without any intellectual mediation is the same as the goal of Buddhism known as ‘awakening’ or ‘enlightenment’” (86).

But other parts lagged. Newly published letters and lecture notes from over the years often – and understandably – repeated many of the same musings on quality. That was the focus of Pirsig’s work, after all. But where one or two different phrasings of the same thought may help with comprehension and retention, six or seven versions of the same concept are mind-numbing. That leads to a disconnect from the material itself, at least for me.

Beyond the tie-in with the Tao, etc., my biggest take-away from On Quality – besides the urge to reread Zen (for the third time!) is a quote from that original material: “The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there” (58).

That’s a Quality goal we can all strive for.