禅与摩托车维修艺术

By Robert M. Pirsig

小编第一次看到这本书是在某网页上推荐的一单程序员必读书中，当时心中暗自排列了下“程序员”、“禅”、“摩托车”这样奇怪的组合，后来发现创业者们也要读这本书，篮球教练也爱这本书，霍金还因为《时间简史》能和此书相比较而感到备受恭维，至此小编觉得真的有必要来了解一下这本哲学小说以及作者的故事。

1928年，罗伯特·M·波西格（Robert M. Pirsig）出生于美国明尼苏达州，天资卓越的他15岁便进入明尼苏达大学主修生物化学，却一度辍学，之后从军，部队归来后重返大学，并在1950年获得了东方哲学的学士学位，随后到贝拿勒斯印度大学学习东方哲学，1958年开始在蒙大拿州立大学教授创意写作课程。他一直在哲学的道路上探索，并因此承受着巨大的精神压力，1961年，他被诊断出患有妄想型精神分裂症和抑郁症，并被多次送入医院，接受电痉挛疗法。

1968年，波西格出院，他带着10岁的儿子克里斯从明尼苏达出发，进行了一次横跨美国大陆的摩托车之旅。这也是一次心灵的探险之旅，最终他解脱并完整了自我，他把旅行中的感受与思考悉数道来，成就了这本《禅与摩托车维修艺术》（Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance）。

1974年，该书在被121家出版社拒绝（吉尼斯世界纪录“世界上被拒稿次数最多的畅销书”）后终于出版，立即成为超级畅销书，而且在之后十余年一直居畅销排行榜之列，并被选为70年代最具影响力的十本书之一。

本文节选的是作者关于人与从事的工作之间的关系的一些思考，进而也可以引申至我们与所学知识之间的关系，与生活环境之间的关系，从而让我们对在这短短数十载的生命中所要依托的生活方式也能有一定的认识。

I found the cause of the seizures a few weeks later， waiting to happen again. It was a little twenty-five-cent pin in the internal oildelivery system that had been 1）sheared and was preventing oil from reaching the head at high speeds.

The question why comes back again and again and has become a major reason for wanting to deliver this 2）Chautauqua. Why did they butcher it so？ These were not people running away from technology， like John and Sylvia. These were the technologists themselves. They sat down to do a job and they performed it like chimpanzees. Nothing personal in it. There was no obvious reason for it. And I tried to think back into that shop， that nightmare place， to try to remember anything that could have been the cause.

The radio was a clue. You cant really think hard about what youre doing and listen to the radio at the same time. Maybe they didnt see their job as having anything to do with hard thought， just 3）wrench 4）twiddling. If you can twiddle wrenches while listening to the radio， thats more enjoyable.

Their speed was another clue. They were really 5）slopping things around in a hurry and not looking where they slopped them. More money that way...if you dont stop to think that it usually takes longer or comes out worse.

几个礼拜之后，我找到故障的原因，它还在那，随时都会再次出故障。在摩托车内部供油系统里有一根二十五美分厚度大小的销子被剪断了，以至于在车高速行驶的时候，油没有办法流进来。

为什么会发生这种事情呢？这个问题不断在我脑海中出现，这就是我想要写这本书的原因。为什么他们的动作这样粗鲁呢？他们不像约翰和西尔维亚一样拒绝科技，他们自己就是搞技术的人，然而做起事来却像猩猩一样，非常野蛮粗鲁。这事似乎没有明显的原因。我试着回想那间修理店，那个恶梦般的地方，想要找出问题的真正答案。

那台收音机是一条线索，一边工作一边听音乐是没有办法真正思考的，或许他们并不认为自己的工作需要任何的思考，只不过是随意地玩弄几把扳手罢了。所以在你玩弄扳手时来点音乐是件很享受的事情。

他们动作很快是另外一条线索，他们把东西随处乱丢，而且也不记得丢在哪里。如果你不思考一番，你就不知道这样做往往会浪费时间，而且成效不佳——当然，那样做更来钱。

But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Goodnatured， friendly， easygoing...and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying， “I am a mechanic. At 5 P .M. or whenever their eight hours were in， you knew they would cut it off and not have another thought about their work. They were already trying not to have any thoughts about their work on the job. In their own way they were achieving the same thing John and Sylvia were， living with technology without really having anything to do with it. Or rather， they had something to do with it， but their own selves were outside of it， detached， removed. They were involved in it but not in such a way as to care.

Not only did these mechanics not find that sheared pin， but it was clearly a mechanic who had sheared it in the first place， by assembling the side cover plate improperly. I remembered the previous owner had said a mechanic had told him the plate was hard to get on. That was why. The shop manual had warned about this， but like the others he was probably in too much of a hurry or he didnt care.

While at work I was thinking about this same lack of care in the digital computer manuals I was editing. Writing and editing technical manuals is what I do for a living the other eleven months of the year and I knew they were full of errors， ambiguities， omissions and information so completely screwed up you had to read them six times to make any sense out of them. But what struck me for the first time was the agreement of these manuals with the spectator attitude I had seen in the shop. These were spectator manuals. It was built into the format of them. Implicit in every line is the idea that “Here is the machine， isolated in time and in space from everything else in the universe. It has no relationship to you， you have no relationship to it， other than to turn certain switches， maintain voltage levels， check for error conditions— ” and so on. Thats it. The mechanics in their attitude toward the machine were really taking no different attitude from the manuals toward the machine， or from the attitude I had when I brought it in there. We were all spectators. And it occurred to me there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance， the most important aspect of all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.

On this trip I think we should notice it， explore it a little， to see if in that strange separation of what man is from what man does we may have some clues as to what the hell has gone wrong in this twentieth century. I dont want to hurry it. That itself is a poisonous twentieth-century attitude. When you want to hurry something， that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. I just want to get at it slowly， but carefully and thoroughly， with the same attitude I remember was present just before I found that sheared pin. It was that attitude that found it， nothing else.

但是最重要的线索似乎是他们脸上的表情。那是一种很难描述的表情，很随和的、友善的、轻松自在的……但却是一副事不关己的表情。他们就像旁观者一样。你会觉得他们无事碰巧闲逛到那里，然后接过别人递给他们的扳手。他们对自己的工作没有认同感，不会说：“我是一名修理人员。”一旦到了下午五点，八个小时一满，你知道他们会立刻放下手中的工作，即刻离开，然后尽可能地不去想他们的工作。其实，他们在工作的时候就已经这么做了（不去想他们的工作）。在这一方面，他们与约翰和西尔维娅一样，虽然想运用科技的成果，但是却不愿和它发生任何关系。或者说他们之间的确有联系，但是他们都没有投身其中，而保持冷淡疏离的态度，他们参与了这方面的工作，但是却没有真正地关心它。

这些修理人员不但没有发现销子断了，而且正是前一个修理人员在组合侧盖板的时候，不小心剪断了销子。我记得以前的车主说过，有一位修理人员告诉他侧盖板很难盖好。这就是原因了。一般摩托车修理手册中都会提到这一点，但是他太匆忙而疏忽了。

在我编辑数码产品、电脑等手册的时候，也在想这个问题。我靠写这些为生，一年当中有十一个月我都在编写这方面的手册，我知道这方面的资料一般都充满了错误，表达含糊不清，删减严重，有的时候需要读上五六遍才能略微了解它们的意思。但是我第一次意识到，这些手册编写者的态度和这些修理人员的态度竟是一致的，都是旁观者，所以这都是些“旁观者手册”。在字里行间，你隐约可以嗅到这样的意味：“这是台机器，它和所处的周围一切都没有关系，它和你没有关系，你和它也没有关系，你只需要懂得操纵某些开关，维持电压，检查某些毛病等等。”就这么一回事。修理人员对这些机器的态度、这些手册所透露出来的态度，包括我当时把车送去修理时的态度都是一样的，都站在了旁观者的角度。这让我意识到市面上没有一本手册认真谈论保养、维修摩托车这门艺术。因为它们都忽略了最重要的一点。人们忽视了专注于自己在做的事情的重要性，或是把所做的事情视为理所当然而为之。

在这次旅行当中，我想我们应该注意这一点，并更深入地研究，看看是否能够了解在我们身处的二十世纪，究竟出了什么问题，把人和人所做的工作分离开来。我打算慢慢研究，因为二十世纪最要不得的态度，就是求快。当你做某件事的时候，一旦想要求快，就表示你再也不关心它，而想去做别的事。所以我想慢慢来，用我查找那个被剪断了的销子的态度，这样才能仔细而且透彻地完成这项工作。除此之外，别无他法。