Mar 26, 2006 08:59 PM
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(Updated Mar 26, 2006 08:59 PM)
“When the student is ready, the master appears.”
This is exactly how it had been with me and this book – “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”.
My brother had given this book to me to read, say about 6 years back. I had tried so many times to read the book, but could never go past the first 20 pages. Something in me would not understand or accept the messages coming out of the book. It was like the book was not speaking to me, it didn’t spring up at me and catch my fancy. I couldn’t relate to it at all. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my brother I just couldn’t read it. On and off he would ask me, if I had read it…I always said (with a bated breath)…I will…
It is one of those books, I thought, that if you hadn’t read it, you were a bad egg! So, one fine fortunate day…I did finally finished reading it! Just like that, in 8 hours! It was not like having read a story, it was more like an experience that can’t be related in words and that will frame the way you look at things thereafter.
That’s when it dawned on me that…maybe, I wasn’t ready for the book before that time. I wasn’t looking for the answers the book was giving before that time. Amazing is an understatement.
Facts of the Book Matter
Story type: Philosophical, Insightful
Setting: Driving in the Countryside
Tone of the book: Narrative, slow, intriguing.
It is no usual yada yada on philosophy, it is a dish fit for the Gods! No wonder why it took me so long to even start to eat it!
It is definitely not a light reading. You have got to read it carefully and understand what you have read before you can move on. The story is a very well written, it tries to give you simplified outlook to otherwise complicated issues, the story in neither about Zen Buddhism nor is it a manual on motorcycle maintenance. It does drop a hint or two about both, though. But it is primarily about the philosophy of life, narrated in a captivating manner with unexpected twists and welcome lessons on life.
A philo-fiction…worth the time and effort it takes to read it!
Now, I have given this book to my younger brother…he says he will read it. :-)
Happy reading!
Dollabua
