The Metaphysics of Quality: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

As Ann proposed, we are going to read the 1974 book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", and discuss its metaphysics of quality.

It's easy to lose ground in the invasion of supposedly Oriental concepts and references in the contemporary tech/engineering newspeak. Every engineer successful enough to be remembered must have something to say about the ethics of "craftsmanship". But Oriental philosophies - as they were gaining adoption and influence in the West - themselves took roots in a soil fertilized by the Industrial Age synthesis. It's widely known that alchemy has long stressed the connection between laboratory discipline and working on one's inner self, but it may be worth reiterating that a connection almost as close as that has long existed in the Christian monastic practice.

What do we do when we work on matter and substance, other than "earn a living"? Is there something in the design of the world that it can teach us in absence of a visible neighbor, a guru, a priest, a teacher? How come philosophers in most early civilizations recognized that order of things, though calling it different names?

This, and more, we are going to discuss.

Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance
https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Robert-Pirsig/dp/0099598167
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig%27s_Metaphysics_of_Quality
http://www.ideologic.org/files/Eugen_Herrigel_-_Zen_in_the_Art_of_Archery.pdf