Remembering Robert M. Pirsig and ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’
Remembering Robert M. Pirsig and ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’
September 6, 2026 at Gurgaon
“If you’re going to hurry, you might as well stay where you are.”
Quite often, after waking up in the morning, I check the historical significance of the day’s date for India and the world. Today, September 6, two entries caught my attention. The first was that on this day in 1965, the Indian Army crossed the international border into Pakistan, opening a major front in the India-Pakistan war. The second was that September 6 marks the 98th birth anniversary of Robert M. Pirsig.
Wars - even necessary ones, like the 1965 conflict - bring only destruction, so I rarely feel inclined to dwell on them. Robert M. Pirsig, on the other hand, made a profound impact on me that remains to this day. Intriguingly, he also had a connection to India.
Pirsig, the author of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values’, was born on September 6, 1928 in Minneapolis, Minesota. He studied chemistry and philosophy (B.A, 1950) and journalism (M.A, 1953) at the University of Minesota. He also attended Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi in India where he studied Oriental Philosophy.
The book was first published in 1974 and I first read it in my mid-twenties (1993-94), during our bachelor days at NTPC Dadri (Vidyutnagar), after my dear friend Debashish (D. M. R. Panda) recommended it. By then, the book had already acquired something of a cult status and had deeply influenced an entire generation. It certainly resonated with me as well. On my friend’s suggestion, I later read Lila, Pirsig’s sequel of ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. I liked it, but found it comparatively tepid.
During my morning long run of 14.41 km today, my thoughts kept returning to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. One line in particular has stayed with me ever since I first read it:
“The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself.”
When I returned home, I immediately went to my bookshelf to locate my copy. The volume in the photograph is a hardback 25th Anniversary Edition that I bought as a birthday present to myself. It isn’t the original copy I read back then—that mass-market paperback either vanished during my many moves or was borrowed by a friend who forgot to return it. The latter possibility feels far more likely, though I prefer to give the friend the benefit of the doubt!
Part memoir, part philosophical inquiry, the book follows a summer motorcycle journey undertaken by a father and his eleven-year-old son—a journey through physical space that gradually becomes a confrontation with some of life’s most difficult questions. As the miles roll by, the narrator’s mind wanders through vast landscapes of thought, moving from mechanical maintenance to the pursuit of a meaningful life, asking the deceptively simple question, “What is best?” Along the way, Pirsig builds an extraordinary philosophical bridge between science, religion and humanism.
Underlying all this is a haunting confrontation with a ghost: Phaedrus, the narrator’s former self, whose relentless search for truth had once driven him to a breakdown and institutionalisation. As father and son ride through places connected to that past life, this ghost continues to loom over the journey. The disconcerting thought process of the narrator is best expressed in this short passage:
“And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good-
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
The narrator is also wrestling with his fragile relationship with his son, who is beginning to show signs of mental illness. What emerges from all this is much more than a philosophical exploration. It is a painful, touching and profoundly moving reflection on life, identity, sanity, relationships and the raw confusions and anxieties of existence.
Many people enjoy long drives by car or motorcycle. While long car rides hold little appeal for me, a cross-country motorcycle trip has always seemed to me the ultimate form of exploration. You feel the wind, the heat and the sun; you breathe in the landscape as you pass through it. There is something wonderfully liberating about being on a motorcycle with the road stretching ahead of you.
I have always admired the adventurous spirits who do this regularly—like my friend and ex-colleague G. Ramesh, who developed a passion for motorcycle journeys a few years ago and has made them a central part of his life. I am not sure if he has read Pirsig’s book, but I suspect he might have. If you haven’t, Ramesh, please pick up a copy. You will be thanking me by the time you reach the final page.
And perhaps that is what makes Pirsig’s book so enduring for me. I read it first as a young man in my twenties, when a motorcycle represented freedom, adventure and the possibility of going somewhere simply because the road was there. I returned to it today, decades later, after a long run, and found myself thinking about the same book—and, in some ways, about the same questions.
An excerpt from the book seems particularly appropriate:
“Unless you’re fond of hollering you don’t make great conversations on a running cycle. Instead, you spend your time being aware of things and meditating on them. On sights and sounds, on the mood of the weather and things remembered, on the machine and the countryside you are in, thinking about things at great leisure and length without being hurried and without feeling you’re losing time.”
Image 1: My copy of ‘Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’, a special 25 years commemorative (1999) edition and a toy metal bike, one of Joy’s prized possessions of the childhood.
Image 2: December -1993 when I got my Yamaha RX-100. But it didn’t take me or rather I didn’t take it any farther than a trip to Connaught Place from Vidyutnagar (NTPC-Dadri), around 45 kms one way.,
Image 3: December -1993, Me and my motorcycle, Place - NTPC Dadri (Vidyutnagar)
