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"There is a perennial classical question that asks which part of the motorcycle, which grain of sand in which pile, is the Buddha. Obviously to ask that question is to look in the wrong direction, for the Buddha is everywhere. But just as obviously to ask the question is to look in the right direction, for the Buddha is everwhere."
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"What is the discovery of the Vitarags, the fully enlightened Ones? It is: 'the slightest violence is the sign of losing. Even the slightest negative thought about someone is the sign of losing. God resides in every living being; how can this hidden fact be known? The Vitarags have called the elemental Self (the Soul), the most hidden element."
"What is the sign of the person residing in his own Self as Pure Soul? Vitaragta [a state of freedom from all worldly attachments]!"
"We should teach people to value more the eternal values."
"Through ignorance a common man considers his own religion to be the best and makes much useless claims, but when his mind is illuminated by Self-Knowledge, all sectarian quarrels disappear."
"I did not tell Fat this, but technically he had become a Buddha. It did not seem to me like a good idea to let him know. After all, if you are a Buddha you should be able to figure it out for yourself."
"Everyone knows how to subtract the gross form of 'my' (tangible 'my'). But how can he know how to subtract the subtle, subtler and the subtlest forms of 'my'? That is the work of the 'Gnani Purush' [the enlightened one]."
"The worldly [spiritual] science is methodic (kramic) in nature; one progresses "step by step; one has to ascent one step at a time. Whereas this here, is Akram Vignan, a path of step-less spiritual science; it is a science that has arisen after 10 Lac (a million) years. In this path, one travels in only an 'elevator'. There is no effort to climb stairs here. Thereafter, one is constantly in the uninterrupted bliss of the Self (samadhi). There is constant bliss amidst mental affliction (aadhi), internal suffering (vyadhi) and externally induced affliction (oopadhi)."
"The one, whose worldly entanglements have gone, is called the 'Absolute Person' (Sampoorna Purush)."
"Illusion (maya) cannot enter where there is 'light' (enlightenment, awareness). Once darkness falls, illusion will enter there. The Gnani Purush can arrange for your illusion to go away permanently."
"Enlightenment " whether defined as spiritual awakening, liberation, or other form of illumination and attentiveness " requires inner transformation brokered by study of our limitations and application of a welcoming spirit of conscious appreciation. Self-knowledge commences by looking for the sacred light of awareness essential to spawn profound change in a person's character."
Explore more quotes by Robert M. Pirsig
"Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships."
"To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions."
"If I hold my head to the left and look down at the handle grips and front wheel and map carrier and gas tank I get one pattern of sense data. If I move my head to the right I get another slightly different pattern of sense data. The two views are different. The angles of the planes and curves of the metal are different. The sunlight strikes them differently. If there's no logical basis for substance then there's no logical basis for concluding that what's produced these two views is the same motorcycle."
"He'd no longer be a grade-motivated person. He'd be a knowledge-motivated person. He would need no external pushing to learn. His push would come from inside. He'd be a free man. He wouldn't need a lot of discipline to shape him up. In fact, if the instructors assigned him were slacking on the job he would be likely to shape them up by asking rude questions. He'd be there to learn something, would be paying to learn something and they'd better come up with it.Motivation of this sort, once it catches hold, is a ferocious force..."
"Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of 'knack' or some kind of 'affinity for machines' in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a 'short between the earphones,' failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself."
"Or winters when the sloughs were frozen over and dead and i could walk across the ice and snow between the dead cattails and see nothing but grey skies and dead things and cold."
"He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions. He came to see his early failure as a lucky break, an accidental escape from a trap that had been set for him, and he was very trap-wary about institutional truths for the remainder of his time."
"The primitive tribes permitted far less individual freedom than does modern society. Ancient wars were committed with far less moral justification than modern ones. A technology that produces debris can find, and is finding, ways of disposing of it without ecological upset. And the schoolbook pictures of primitive man sometimes omit some of the detractions of his primitive life - the pain, the disease, famine, the hard labor needed just to stay alive. From that agony of bare existence to modern life can be soberly described only as upward progress, and the sole agent for this progress is quite clearly reason itself."
"We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with the emphasis on 'good' rather than on 'time'...."
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