Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (31 page)

What the classical formalists meant by the objection ``Quality is just what you like'' was that this subjective, undefined ``quality'' he was teaching was just romantic surface appeal. Classroom popularity contests could determine whether a composition had immediate appeal, all right, but was this Quality? Was Quality something that you ``just see'' or might it be something more subtle than that, so that you wouldn't see it at all immediately, but only after a long period of time?

The more he examined this argument the more formidable it appeared. This looked like the one that might do in his whole thesis.

What made it so ominous was that it seemed to answer a question that had arisen often in class and which he always had to answer somewhat casuistically. This was the question, If everyone knows what quality is, why is there such a disagreement about it?

His casuist answer had been that although pure Quality was the same for everyone, the objects that people said Quality inhered in varied from person to person. As long as he left Quality undefined there was no way to argue with this but he knew and he knew the students knew that it had the smell of falseness about it. It didn't really answer the question.

Now there was an alternative explanation: people disagreed about Quality because some just used their immediate emotions whereas others applied their overall knowledge. He knew that in any popularity contest among English teachers, this latter argument which bolstered their authority would win overwhelming endorsement.

But this argument was completely devastating. Instead of one single, uniform Quality now there appeared to be two qualities; a romantic one, just seeing, which the students had; and a classic one, overall understanding, which the teachers had. A hip one and a square one. Squareness was not the absence of Quality; it was classic Quality. Hipness was not just presence of Quality; it was mere romantic Quality. The hip-square cleavage he'd discovered was still there, but Quality didn't now seem to fall entirely on one side of the cleavage, as he'd previously supposed. Instead, Quality itself cleaved into two kinds, one on each side of the cleavage line. His simple, neat, beautiful, undefined Quality was starting to get complex.

He didn't like the way this was going. The cleavage term that was going to unify the classic and romantic ways of looking at things had itself been cleaved into two parts and could no longer unify anything. It had been caught in an analytic meat grinder. The knife of subjectivity-and-objectivity had cut Quality in two and killed it as a working concept. If he was going to save it, he couldn't let that knife get it.

And really, the Quality he was talking about wasn't classic Quality or romantic Quality. It was beyond both of them. And by God, it wasn't subjective or objective either, it was beyond both of those categories. Actually this whole dilemma of subjectivity-objectivity, of mind-matter, with relationship to Quality was unfair. That mind-matter relationship has been an intellectual hang-up for centuries. They were just putting that hang-up on top of Quality to drag Quality down. How could he say whether Quality was mind or matter when there was no logical clarity as to what was mind and what was matter in the first place?

And so: he rejected the left horn. Quality is not objective, he said. It doesn't reside in the material world.

Then: he rejected the right horn. Quality is not subjective, he said. It doesn't reside merely in the mind.

And finally: Phædrus, following a path that to his knowledge had never been taken before in the history of Western thought, went straight between the horns of the subjectivity-objectivity dilemma and said Quality is neither a part of mind, nor is it a part of matter. It is a third entity which is independent of the two.

He was heard along the corridors and up and down the stairs of Montana Hall singing softly to himself, almost under his breath, ``Holy, holy, holy -- blessed Trinity.''

And there is a faint, faint fragment of memory, possibly wrong, possibly just something I'm imagining, that says he just let the whole thought structure sit like that for weeks, without carrying it any further.

Chris shouts, ``When are we going to get to the top?''

``Probably quite a way yet,'' I reply.

``Will we see a lot?''

``I think so. Look for blue sky between the trees. As long as we can't see sky we know it's a way yet. The light will come through the trees when we round the top.''

Last night's rain has soaked this soft duff of needles sufficiently to make them good walking. Sometimes when it's really dry on a slope like this they become slippery and you have to dig your feet into them edgewise or you'll slide down.

I say to Chris, ``Isn't it great when there's no underbrush like this?''

``Why isn't there any?'' he asks.

``I think this area must never have been logged. When a forest is left alone like this for centuries, the trees shut out all the underbrush.''

``It's like a park,'' Chris says. ``You can sure see all around.'' His mood seems much better than yesterday. I think he'll be a good traveler from here on. This forest silence improves anyone.

The world now, according to Phædrus, was composed of three things: mind, matter, and Quality. The fact that he had established no relationship between them didn't bother him at first. If the relationship between mind and matter had been fought over for centuries and wasn't yet resolved, why should he, in a matter of a few weeks, come up with something conclusive about Quality? So he let it go. He put it up on a kind of mental shelf where he put all kinds of questions he had no immediate answers for. He knew the metaphysical trinity of subject, object and Quality would sooner or later have to be interrelated but he was in no hurry about it. It was just so satisfying to be beyond the danger of those horns that he relaxed and enjoyed it as long as he could.

Eventually, however, he examined it more closely. Although there's no logical objection to a metaphysical trinity, a three-headed reality, such trinities are not common or popular. The metaphysician normally seeks either a monism, such as God, which explains the nature of the world as a manifestation of one single thing, or he seeks a dualism, such as mind-matter, which explains it as two things, or he leaves it as a pluralism, which explains it as a manifestation of an indefinite number of things. But three is an awkward number. Right away you want to know, Why three? What's the relationship among them? And as the need for relaxation diminished Phædrus became curious about this relationship too.

He noted that although normally you associate Quality with objects, feelings of Quality sometimes occur without any object at all. This is what led him at first to think that maybe Quality is all subjective. But subjective pleasure wasn't what he meant by Quality either. Quality decreases subjectivity. Quality takes you out of yourself, makes you aware of the world around you. Quality is opposed to subjectivity.

I don't know how much thought passed before he arrived at this, but eventually he saw that Quality couldn't be independently related with either the subject or the object but could be found only in the relationship of the two with each other. It is the point at which subject and object meet.

That sounded warm.

Quality is not a thing. It is an event.

Warmer.

It is the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object.

And because without objects there can be no subject...because the objects create the subject's awareness of himself...Quality is the event at which awareness of both subjects and objects is made possible.

Hot.

Now he knew it was coming.

This means Quality is not just the result of a collision between subject and object. The very existence of subject and object themselves is deduced from the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the Quality!

Now he had that whole damned evil dilemma by the throat. The dilemma all the time had this unseen vile presumption in it, for which there was no logical justification. that Quality was the effect of subjects and objects. It was not! He brought out his knife.

``The sun of quality,'' he wrote, ``does not revolve around the subjects and objects of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is not subordinate to them in any way. It has created them. They are subordinate to it!

And at that point, when he wrote that, he knew he had reached some kind of culmination of thought he had been unconsciously striving for over a long period of time.

``Blue sky!'' shouts Chris.

There it is, way above us, a narrow patch of blue through the trunks of the trees.

We move faster and the patches of blue become larger and larger through the trees and soon we see that the trees thin out to a bare spot at the summit. When the summit is about fifty yards away I say, ``Let's go!'' and start to dash for it, throwing into the effort all the reserves of energy I've been saving.

I give it everything I have, but Chris gains on me. Then he passes me, giggling. With the heavy load and high altitude we're not setting any records but now we're just charging up with all we have.

Chris gets there first, while I just break out of the trees. He raises his arms and shouts, ``The Winner!''

Egotist.

I'm breathing so hard when I arrive I can't speak. We just drop our packs from our shoulders and lie down against some rocks. The crust of the ground is dry from the sun, but underneath is mud from last night's rain. Below us and miles away beyond the forested slopes and the fields beyond them is the Gallatin Valley. At one corner of the valley is Bozeman. A grasshopper jumps up from the rock and soars down and away from us over the trees.

``We made it,'' Chris says. He is very happy. I am still too winded to answer. I take off my boots and socks which are soggy with sweat and set them out to dry on a rock. I stare at them meditatively as vapors from them rise up toward the sun.

Evidently I've slept. The sun is hot. My watch says a few minutes before noon. I look over the rock I'm leaning against and see Chris sound asleep on the other side. Way up above him the forest stops and barren grey rock leads into patches of snow. We can climb the back of this ridge straight up there, but it would be dangerous toward the top. I look up at the top of the mountain for a while. What was it Chris said I told him last night?...``I'll see you at the top of mountain'' -- no -- ``I'll meet you at the top of the mountain.''

How could I meet him at the top of the mountain when I'm already with him? Something's very strange about that. He said I told him something else too, the other night...that it's lonely here. That contradicts what I actually believe. I don't think it's lonely here at all.

A sound of falling rock draws my attention over to one side of the mountain. Nothing moves. Completely still.

It's all right. You hear little rockslides like this all the time.

Not so little sometimes, though. Avalanches start with little slides like that. If you're above them or beside them, they're interesting to watch. But if they're above you...no help then. You just have to watch it come.

People say strange things in their sleep, but why would I tell him I'll meet him? And why would he think I was awake? There's something really wrong there that produces a very bad quality feeling, but I don't know what it is. First you get the feeling, then you figure out why.

I hear Chris move and turn and see him look around.

``Where are we?'' he asks.

``Top of the ridge.''

``Oh,'' he says. He smiles.

I break open a lunch of Swiss cheese, pepperoni and crackers. I cut up the cheese and then the pepperoni in careful, neat slices. The silence allows you to do each thing right.

``Let's build a cabin here,'' he says.

``Ohhhhh,'' I groan, ``and climb up to it every day?''

``Sure,'' he teases. ``That wasn't hard.''

Yesterday is long ago in his memory. I pass some cheese and crackers over to him.

``What are you always thinking about?'' he asks.

``Thousands of things,'' I answer.

``What?''

``Most of them wouldn't make any sense to you.''

``Like what?''

``Like why I told you I'd meet you at the top of the mountain.''

``Oh,'' he says, and looks down.

``You said I sounded drunk,'' I tell him

``No, not drunk,'' he says, still looking down. The way he looks away from me makes me wonder all over again if he's telling the truth.

``How then?''

He doesn't answer.

``How then, Chris?''

``Just different.''

``How?''

``Well, I don't know!'' He looks up at me and there's a flicker of fear. ``Like you used to sound a long time ago,'' he says, and then looks down.

``When?''

``When we lived here.''

I keep my face composed so that he sees no change of expression in it, then carefully get up and go over and methodically turn the socks on the rock. They've dried long ago. As I return with them I see his glance is still on me. Casually I say, ``I didn't know I sounded different.''

He doesn't reply to this.

I put the socks on and slip the boots over them.

``I'm thirsty,'' Chris says.

``We shouldn't have too far to go down to find water,'' I say, standing up. I look at the snow for a while, then say, ``You ready to go?''

He nods and we get the packs on.

As we walk along the summit toward the beginning of a ravine we hear another clattering sound of falling rock, much louder than the first one I heard just a while ago. I look up to see where it is. Still nothing.

``What was that?'' Chris asks.

``Rockslide.''

We both stand still for a moment, listening. Chris asks, ``Is there somebody up there?''

``No, I think it's just melting snow that's loosening stones. When it's really hot like this in the early part of the summer you hear a lot of small rockslides. Sometimes big ones. It's part of the wearing down of the mountains.''

``I didn't know mountains wore out.''