Why "A Handful of Sand"

The book that has had the most influence on my life is Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was the first book of any serious philosophical pretense that I read by choice. Though it took a couple of times through before I understood much of what I was reading, I was immediately struck by how much of what Pirsig said constituted a sophisticated and coherent discussion of the many raw and incoherent ramblings that had occupied my head since childhood.

Perhaps more importantly, Pirsig's book was the turning point in my approach to Zen and Buddhism. I had long been very skeptical of Buddhist philosophy, associating it with the drug-loving Beats and my drug-loving high school friends. Pirsig's book convinced me to take another look, which led me to the Cambridge Zen Center and weekly classes. And I've never looked back.

That's a long way of introducing one of my favorite passages from the book, in which Pirsig discusses the way we sort, categorize, dichotomize, and generally misunderstand the world around us:

We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness and call that handful of sand the world. Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. We divide the sand into parts. This and that. Here and there. Black and white. Now and then.

And there you have it. It is all Pirsig's fault. Blame him.