Zen = Quality

In this post I want to explain my thoughts on two books I read recently. The first one is “The Way of Zen” by Alan W. Watts. It was written in the 1950’s. It is an attempt to explain, in English, what Zen is. It says itself that it is not possible to define Zen, so any attempt to verbalize it is going to fail. Yet that is the way of the West, so Mr. Watts gave it a try. He used many translations of texts and compiled a wonderful book of little stories, haikus and other zen poetry. As he can’t really say what zen is, the sense of the stories is not apparent. As a matter of fact, zen seems to be reached when you can answer incoherently to a simple and clear question. You just have to do it without thinking and immediately. There must be no consideration.

Somehow sitting around thinking without doing anything else leads to such a mental place. One of the places I stored in my story crumb repository was the wonderment of the Western people who ask how anybody can do anything good by just sitting around not doing anything. The answer given was that there seem to be enough people doing stuff already and it seems like a wise decision to stay out of it and not cause any more trouble. Muddy water clears best when left alone, after all.


Zen Dream by *RoieG on deviantART

The other book, which I read right after Zen is a popular classic from the 1970’s. It is written by Robert M. Pirsig and it is called “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”. It was the right kind of philosophy for me. It deals with the Western analytical thought. The framing story is a motorcycle trip in backlands of North America, but the real story is the hunt for Quality. What Quality is and how come we seem to have lost it. An additional things was that it seemed impossible to define, at least to the clearly capable but mentally labile main character.

The book made me think and as I attached a small post-it note at each passage of text I wanted to store, I quickly ran out of stickers. At some point I realized something, along with the main character. Zen was outside definition and I had some kind of idea of it after reading Mr. Watts’ book and now there it was, Quality, just like that outside of any definitions. It was clear to me that whatever Quality was, it was Zen. It is the attribute of an activity that is needed additional to plain work in order for the result to turn out good. Without Quality, you just have a product or a thing or stuff. With Quality, you have a useful tool, a productive team, an elegant solution or a beautiful result.

In another context, I heard a character in a TV series say “love is something you can’t define.” Was Love the same as Zen? Was Caring about the work the ingredient that added Quality to the work? I think it is. No matter what you call it, professional pride or perseverance in the face of trouble and adversity, I think Love is Quality is Zen.


1 Motorcycle by ~NutsnRaisins on deviantART

Does it do any good to have this insight? Indirectly it does, I think. As with all knowledge, the question is how you apply it. With the insight at hand we can see that the people most likely to do a good job - any job - tend to pay attention to it, are concerned for it and motivated to finish it with the best possible results. It doesn’t mean that you have to be a perfectionist, but it means that trying really to improve things every time can not hurt you. Actually, performing a quality job improves not only whatever it is you’re working on, it improves you yourself in the process. As a matter of fact, Robert M. Pirsig puts it very well in his book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”:

“Or if he takes whatever dull job he’s stuck with - and they are all, sooner or later, dull - and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he’s likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his Quality decisions change him too. And not only the job and him, but others too because the Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn’t think anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels a little better because of it, and is likely to pass that feeling on to others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going.
My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all.”
It makes sense for your own sake to always strive for a genuine improvement. It is good physically, mentally, spiritually and socially.

The way the book is written, gave me an idea. What if I tried to explore some subject as a journey in this blog myself? The motorcycle trip across America is an easily understood metaphor and it makes for a great framing structure. I need to find my own journey, of course, but the main idea would be to describe the journey (of my life) and every once in a while dive deep into an interesting subject, trying to uncover the ultimate truth about it, all the while watching out for insanity. You, as readers, will have a great responsibility. You have to notify me, when you think I’m diving too deep into my thoughts and won’t have enough air in my lungs to reach the surface for another gulp. In other words, you’ll have to comment on my writings and tell me when I’m losing it. Warn me before it is too late.

The topic of my search will be software, software quality and whatever else pops up (that’s the trouble with any expedition, you never quite know what you are in for, otherwise there wouldn’t be any real discoveries) and the approach I try to take initially is traditional scientific method. I’ll first state the problem I want to solve, then I’ll write down some reasons or causes for the problem (the so called hypothesis), then I’ll design some experiments to test the hypothesis, predict the results of those experiments (notice emphasis on ‘predict’. It is a key ingredient of science to be able to say beforehand what should happen. There’s nothing mythical about that.), then I’ll perform the tests and observe their results and as a final step I’ll draw conclusions from the test results. That is the Scientific Method as described in Pirsig’s book, too.

I discovered a series of videos on the internet, which I find absolutely captivating. For the last two weeks I’ve been watching the video lectures of Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Open Courseware offering. I’m currently following the Classical Mechanics course (8.01) at a rate of a lecture each day. Professor Walter Lewin makes each lecture lively and interesting by being enthusiastic and always having a more or less practical experiment up his sleeve. Not to mention the ever-changing pocket ornaments. On iTunes Store, there are two more lecture series Electricity and Magnetism (8.02) and Vibrations and Waves (8.03). I’m currently not doing any exercises, although I’m sure that would make the experience even more useful. For now, I’m happy to try and walk on an almost familiar ground. These are mostly things I was taught way back in school, and most of them I can at least vaguely remember and understand. Every once in a while it seems that Professor Lewin shows the matter in a way, which makes me understand it more deeply than I’ve ever done. That feels good. Before, I just wanted to watch the lectures because it pleased me. And as I was sick and traveling between Christmas and New Year’s, I had nothing better to do anyway, so I could get started. I had no clear value statement in mind. I didn’t know what for I would use my re-learned knowledge of physics, but I had the vague idea that I would find a use for it. It was clearly useful and valuable knowledge to have. Now the road is quite clear, I will approach the area of software (without defining it yet to software engineering, quality or whatever is supposed to be known by now.) as undiscovered territory and I will try and see if I can’t develop a kind of Physics of Software, just like we have the natural laws of physics that govern the universe. And just like chemistry is basically physics with useful shortcuts to hide many details, it just might be that I get to discover something like Chemistry of Software. Who knows, but I have to admit to being excited about the prospects. I'll label relevant posts with "Science of Software".


Code for Life by ~woraz on deviantART

I’m going to invent a traveling metaphor or similar to use as a framing structure for the rest of the narrative and go on discovering software as scientifically as I can as if it were terra incognita (unknown territory).

So please stay tuned, check back for how my journey is going and let me know if you want me to continue, or if there are errors in my thinking. Tell me if you don’t understand my reasons or logic, let me know if you have had an idea because of something you read here, generally comment just to show that you are following, it helps keep me going. And who knows what we’ll accomplish in the end.

I’d like to end with a French greeting, which puzzled me for some time until I realized what it really meant. Upon leaving a store or café in Paris, the people used to say “Bonne journée” to me and I was always thinking how did they know that I was traveling. Probably because of my accent (well, mostly my using of English, which clearly spoken isn’t an accent of French at all.), I thought. Until it dawned on me (by Virpi, of course) that they were just wishing me a “Nice Day”, not “Happy Trails”.

Anyway, without further ado, I’d like to wish us “Bonne journée!”


Wave Goodbye by ~beautifullyxchaotic on deviantART