Footprints

The problem with the thesis of Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance is not the fact that it seems to bring about a religious experience for the main characters as well as bring them together, it's that the father and son spend all of this time learning to care for a machine that will soon not need caring for. The promise of technology is that it will make our lives easier and so take out the possibility of seeing the beauty and caring about a motorcycle in the same way we care (or are supposed to care) about nature. The whole concept seems to flip the intention of Dogen's (the founder) Soto Zen Buddhist sect, which taught that little by little one could attain enlightenment through meditation. What is interesting about the Soto school is that the meditation didn't have to entail being bald, having a robe, a mat, and an entire day dedicated to mediation instead it was about work as a sort of meditation. (takes 30 minute break from post because can no longer hold in the urge to revise play writing assignment... I feel like I just put up an IM away message... I think I have defiled the Blog with such IM lingo, that’s a shame)
I have returned (there should be some sort of superman music there), back to Zen Buddhism. In this sense the Soto school of Zen Buddhism is completely compatible with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. However, the enlightenment portion of the Soto school, in my opinion doesn't correspond with this idea. Enlightenment is realized when one learns, who God is for them and what spirituality means (thus the four noble truths and the eight-fold path), which is different to each person who is meditating. Also, within Buddhism is this intense respect for nature as embodied in right action of the eight fold path, which puts forth very clearly not to harm anything whether it be nature or humans. On a larger scale, Buddhism, is about getting to a point where one is removed from the world (maya) and is fully enlightened as Siddhartha himself. To me learning how to work a device like a motorcycle is only making one become more engaged in the world and thus not fulfilling a purpose. Furthermore, what seems to bother Borgmann is that a motorcycle is not symbolic of anything not within the scope of technology. For example, Borgmann says the term wilderness excites some sort of excitement to dominate it yet at the same time it is symbolic of the concept of being untamed. However, I can look at a motorcycle and say it's symbolic of how humans have tamed the wilderness but I can't see a universal truth in the symbolism of the motorcycle because it 1) hasn't been around since the beginning of time 2) it's always changing and 3) as it is made by humans it is subject human infallibility unlike nature. I'm sure someone would want to start a God fight with me over the last comment and if they didn't I'd probably want to start one with myself but everyone can agree that I didn't go outside ten years ago pull a seed out my ear, throw it on the ground, and say "tree, I command you, be made." First, because I didn't know what command meant, second because my talking consisted of successive growls at age 8 (by choice...the world just wasn't cool enough), and because seeds do not grow out my ears (contrary to popular belief). So, why shouldn't we search for Enlightenment and spirituality in something that is concrete and eternal. Since, I have never read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance the experience Borgmann talks about with nature and this novel reminds me a great deal of a quotation from one of my favorite short stories called Sleep by Haruki Murakami. It goes something like, "And the fact that I was part of such a life, a life that had swallowed me up so completely. At the fact that my footprints were being blown away before I even had a chance to turn and look at them... I'd stare at my face purely as a physical object, and gradually it would disconnect from the rest of me, becoming just something that happened to exist at the same time as myself. And a realization would come to me. It's got nothing to do with footprints." That's attaining enlightenment. (swooning at the fact that I talked about Murakami without getting stares of huh? Because no one can give evil stares on the internet unless you attach one of those aim faces...While writing this I find it highly ironic that I'm writing against taking any value in a technological device in this post even though it just gave me some incredible freedom...perhaps that's the problem)