Wandering Ten Thousand Li in Zen Journey - A Wonderful Spiritual Journey of Humanity in Search of Self: Zen and Motorcycle Repair Technology

Author: (USA) Robert M. Pirsig
Translator: Zhang Guochen
Country: United States
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: Sincere, innocent, simple yet believable. It is a novel, a travelogue, a quest, a series of lectures, and a non-religious confession. – The New York Times Book Review
I was highly praised for writing a book that people compared to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I hope my work (Cosmos) will make people feel that they don’t have to be excluded from great wisdom and philosophical questions, just like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. – Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking
I tried to engage the players with various things to help them focus better. For example, during the journey, I had them read a philosophical book like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Instead of flying, we rented a car from Seattle to Portland. I wanted the players to immerse themselves in the scenery and reach a different state of mind. – Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson
A motorcycle journey across the continent of America, a philosophical seminar with two speakers, a quest for self-discovery, a pursuit of truth, and a search for the deeper meaning of life. The story of the book is not complex, nor does it have an engaging plot. It simply tells the process of a man who, through his travels, comes to understand the meaning of life and achieves self-redemption. Yet after its publication in the United States, it created a huge impact, selling 8 million copies over a decade. The New York Times commented: “Profound and important. Filled with insights into the dilemmas of our lives. It is the highest level of spiritual entertainment. One of the most profound and important bestsellers of our time.”
Now, if there is anything special about this book, it is that the author, through the strange thoughts of his protagonist, raises many common spirituals in modern human life. It is a book with a peculiar yet interesting content. In the summer of the 1970s, the author rode a motorcycle alone from Minnesota to California, traveling through poor and remote areas, pouring out his observations, feelings, thoughts, and reflections to his 11-year-old son. Along the way, he reveals his views on the truth of life and the essence of existence. The writing is elegant, concise, and moving. In the book, the author diagnoses various social pathologies and attempts to provide a cure for the spiritual emptiness of modern people: he argues that modern people have distanced themselves from their true selves in pursuit of careers and wealth, becoming machines and forgetting that they are human. The dualism of the Western world, such as the dichotomy between humanities and technology, spirit and matter, mysticism and mechanism, art and industry, mind and machine, and East and West, are all fundamental issues criticized in the book.
The book has been regarded as a contemporary classic in the United States and more than ten countries around the world, and it was once named one of the ten most influential books of the 1970s by Time magazine.