Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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

Here, the narrator refers to the fact that so many people are in a constant state of searching for answers, and yet when answers are provided, they dismiss them because the answers are not what they want to see. Or worse, they simply cannot see the truth.

“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.”

People are used to the mechanical functions of day-to-day living, never questioning the reason behind the rules. Once a person is able to see the misery that they are enmeshed in, it is often too late—too much time has passed.

“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. It’s all a ghost….Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.”

The narrator equates thoughts and laws as concepts of the mind, derived by thought and reason. In this sense, they function by definition like the concept of a ghost, which is thought to exist as a figment of the mind.