Moving With the Times

I have been turning my thoughts back to a few of the literary and philosophical works I read as a youth, having recently been reminded of my pleasure in reading Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in my early teens. This is one of those titles a deep reader can pick up time and time again, and always find something new to consider, some aspect that had escaped them during an earlier reading, some relevance to today. This is also one of those works which almost failed to come into being, until a publisher, without anticipating any real commercial value or financial gain, finally brought it out in print. But it was not this title which I removed from the bookshelves, but one of a much earlier date, and one which may well be referenced in Pirsig’s introduction: Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschiessens by Eugen Herrigel, published in English as Zen in the Art of Archery. No matter what a modern reader my consider over the life and beliefs of Herrigel, or whether it can be said he learned what he wrote as he describes it, the work does excite the mind to deeper thoughts. As with Pirsig, he considers the Quality of Life through a physical activity which appears to enhance philosophical thought, and refers back to philosophers of the past.

… so daß Laotse tiefsinnig sagen kann, das rechte Leben gleiche dem Wasser, welches zu allem passend sich allem anpaßt. Hinzu kam, daß in der Schule des Meisters das Wort umging: wer sich am Anfang leicht tut, tut sich später umso schwerer.

… so that Lao Tzu could say that the right way to live life is like water, which adapts itself to everything. Furthermore, the saying circulated in the Master’s school: those who take things easy at the beginning, makes things more difficult for themselves later.

There are, undoubtedly many other possible translations for this simple idea, as with an original idea from Heraclitus which many will have come across in one way or another, and has been both translated, and interpreted in myriad ways:

ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμβαίνομεν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἰμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἰμέν.

We step and do not step into the same rivers, we are and we are not.

Among many other questions which the book raises, is the one of reality. All philosophical work has to do with the mind, and how the mind interprets reality, how we react to reality as opposed to what the mind had imagined would be, how we justify our actions in the face of reality. Here, in Japan at the turn of the last century, we are faced with a series of philosophical thoughts from the modern, tuned into the actions performed in an ancient art. We have a narrator of events and thoughts trying to match one to another: the modern of his life, and the ancient of a system he has never experienced, is socially and educationally not attuned to. His whole conception of life, and the art of archery, has to be reworked from a mythical European standpoint, to that of a philosophical Japanese one, where the social and intellectual customs have little if anything in common. Can a Westerner truly understand an Eastern art form – especially a philosophical one without visual aid – and adapt their life to it? Or does their understanding produce a bastardized version, adapted to their upbringing and education, with just a leaning toward the original philosophical thought of the East?

Equally to the point: can we place ourselves in the right mental position to understand the philosophy and social customs of an age we have never, can never, experience? Is there such an educational and intellectual stand point in the West which can explain and understand the concept of being unable to step into the same river twice while, at the same time, stepping into that same river? The idea of Being and Not Being has been explored by countless modern philosophers, from Sartre through Wittegenstein and beyond, stretching back into the mists of time, and often without a end, without a conclusion. Although, as we know, philosophy cannot come to a conclusion: it is a continuous progression of thoughts and processes looping and meandering through minds and words, interpretations and prejudices ad infinitum.

And yet, with all this in mind, I am happy to reach out and take this small book down once more, open its browning, brittle pages, and immerse myself in the thoughts it produces in my own mind. And that, as a beginning in another journey, is enough.