Frustrations:

Recently I have begun rereading Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". It is a good book, and I have enjoyed it other times that I have read it. It is billed as "the extraordinary story of a man's quest for truth" which will "change the way you think and feel about your life." I guess this kid of identification ought to be expected from a book published by Bantam New Age Books.

This time, in reading it, I have noticed things that I either did not notice before, or else glossed over in my reading for what would have been, at the time, more important things for me. But this time I am noticing that this book is not really about a man's quest for the truth. I am reading it for the story that goes with it, and waiting for the ending, to see how everything works to the ending, which I already know.

I say that it is not a man's quest for truth, for the author (or narrator I should say) says that he is looking for truth, but really isn't. What he is searching for is some idea of the truth that will make sense to him, and appease his intellect, reason, emotion and humanity. He is looking for a truth that he wants to find.

This is a little harsh, I suppose, but how can some one say that they are looking for truth, but then, at the same time, make statements like "there was nothing in the flat-earth views of the Old and New Testaments that predicted it" when discussing Columbus' discovery of the 'new world'. How is it a search for truth if the narrator does not wish to discover what the different views really say?

Now, I am using this as a springboard, I suppose, and venting my frustration at any one who thinks that they 'understand' Christianity, but really only have in mind some strange vilified version of it that they have appropriated from critics and detractors. For let's face it, Christianity is just not popular anymore.

Anyways, before I go off on a tangent from which I won't be able to recover, I will stop myself. I will continue discussing this search for truth in "Zen".

I suppose that when this book was written (first published in 1974), there was maybe a need in society to refresh ideas of truth, spirituality, and things that religion is concerned with. But to make statements about the old way of doing things, of Tradition, that suggest that it is being rejected outright is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There was a lot of good that happened in the Christian age of the Western world. Christianity was responsible for education, science, etc etc for quite some time. The Copernican revolution was not a clash between science and religion, as so many people now seem to think, for Copernicus was a part of that religion. The Copernican revolution was a clash between different views of that religion at worst. Different ways of interpreting that tradition and sacred literature.

I think this is one of the things that frustrates me the most about the society I live in, which I first noticed in my university education. People have a concept of religion (especially Christianity) which no amount of discussion will ever change. And no matter how wrong their view is, they will merely either refuse to change their views, or consider a believer to be intellectually inferior, for they still have to rely on the 'crutch' of organized religion to tell them what they believe and think.

I won't try to prove them wrong, here or anywhere, for I don't think that this can be done. I suppose the only way to go about this is to do this one person at a time, and show by lifestyle and intellect that their view is wrong.

At the same time, what is equally frustrating for me, or maybe even a little more, are those Christians who give ammunition to the detractors by their views and opinions which are either their own uninformed views or merely the repetition of some one else's views which they don't even understand.

But before I begin to rant and rave, I will stop myself, and work all of this out for myself a little more systematically. I am hoping to rework my expression of my views on spirituality from this post, and express them a little more systematically and usefully.