PART I

1

We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes. (Location 137)

The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling. (Location 150)

We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. (Location 179)

You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate. (Location 314)

2

3

It’s best to be completely scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you’re safe. That doesn’t leave you very much to believe in, but that’s scientific too.” (Location 571)

Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know.” “What?” “Oh, the laws of physics and of logic…the number system…the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real.” (Location 597)

The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense. (Location 615)

“and what that means is that the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people’s heads! (Location 617)

“Why does everybody believe in the law of gravity then?” “Mass hypnosis. In a very orthodox form known as ‘education.’” (Location 619)

“Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. (Location 635)

4

5

6 (Location 1130)

Note: .h1

7

It’s important now to just live with this and not fight it mentally…mind control…. (Location 1342)

All the time we are aware of millions of things around us—these (Location 1345)

aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. (Location 1347)

From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world. (Location 1349)

Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. (Location 1351)

You’d think the process of subdivision and classification would come to an end somewhere, but it doesn’t. It just goes on and on. (Location 1357)

Classical understanding is concerned with the piles and the basis for sorting and interrelating them. Romantic understanding is directed toward the handful of sand before the sorting begins. (Location 1358)

What has become an urgent necessity is a way of looking at the world that does violence to neither of these two kinds of understanding and unites them into one. Such an understanding will not reject sand-sorting or contemplation of unsorted sand for its own sake. Such an understanding will instead seek to direct attention to the endless landscape from which the sand is taken. (Location 1361)

But apart from a personality what is there? Some bones and flesh. A collection of legal statistics, perhaps, but surely no person. The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around. (Location 1493)

PART II

8

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. (Location 1564)

People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no “mean guy” who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless. (Location 1621)

9

Now I want to talk about methods of finding one’s way through these hierarchies—logic. Two kinds of logic are used, inductive and deductive. Inductive inferences start with observations of the machine and arrive at general conclusions. (Location 1707)

That is induction: reasoning from particular experiences to general truths. Deductive inferences do the reverse. They start with general knowledge and predict a specific observation. (Location 1712)

Solution of problems too complicated for common sense to solve is achieved by long strings of mixed inductive and deductive inferences that weave back and forth between the observed machine and the mental hierarchy of the machine found in the manuals. The correct program for this inter-weaving is formalized as scientific method. (Location 1716)

The real purpose of scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you don’t actually know. (Location 1734)

10

Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world. He then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it…. He makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life in order to find in this way the peace and serenity which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience…. The supreme task…is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them…. (Location 1823)

Note: Quote from Albert Einstein

As he was testing hypothesis number one by experimental method a flood of other hypotheses would come to mind, and as he was testing these, some more came to mind, and as he was testing these, still more came to mind until it became painfully evident that as he continued testing hypotheses and eliminating them or confirming them their number did not decrease. It actually increased as he went along. (Location 1837)

If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge. (Location 1846)

Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple, indeterminate, relative ones. (Location 1868)

Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. (Location 1880)

11

The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha—which is to demean oneself. (Location 354)

I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn’t mean much. (Location 377)

When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. (Location 506)

A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance. (Location 1197)

Note: Structure vs. Content

His way of looking at things produces a kind of description that can be called an “analytic” description. That is another name of the classic platform from which one discusses things in terms of their underlying form. He was a totally classic person. And to give a fuller description of what this is I want now to turn his analytic approach back upon itself—to analyze analysis itself. (Location 1244)

Note: Going meta

When our eyes blink, for example, our sense data tell us that the world has disappeared. But this is screened out and never gets to our consciousness because we have in our minds an a priori concept that the world has continuity. What we think of as reality is a continuous synthesis of elements from a fixed hierarchy of a priori concepts and the ever changing data of the senses. (Location 2138)

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. (Location 2455)

The statement “To travel is better than to arrive” comes back to mind again and stays. We have been traveling and now we will arrive. For me a period of depression comes on when I reach a temporary goal like this and have to reorient myself toward another one. (Location 2484)

The real purpose of withholding the grades was to force them to look within themselves, the only place they would ever get a really right answer. (Location 3253)

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. (Location 3311)

Note: Detachment from outcome. Be in the present moment

Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster. (Location 3425)

I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it. (Location 4041)

The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. This preintellectual reality is what Phaedrus felt he had properly identified as Quality. Since all intellectually identifiable things must emerge from this preintellectual reality, Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects. (Location 4049)

People differ about Quality, not because Quality is different, but because people are different in terms of experience. (Location 4094)

So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all. (Location 4876)

The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. (Location 4884)

Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value. (Location 4885)