This study will compare and contrast the paths to enlightenment portrayed in two books, Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna, by China Galland, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig. The study will consider how the spiritual/philosophical journey toward truth and reality is a natural process and one in which we are all perpetually involved.
Both works tend to emphasize an Eastern approach to wisdom, although Pirsig's journey takes place entirely in the United States, while Galland travels throughout the world, East and West. This Eastern approach to wisdom stresses intuition and experience over dogma or doctrine. Although both authors include many elements of Western religion and thought (especially Greek philosophy in Pirsig and Christian faith in Galland), it would be fair to say that their hearts belong more to the open-ended ways of the East than the conclusion-oriented ways of the West. Both works emphasize the holistic nature of the spiritual journey---the journey takes place both inside the individual and outside in the world at the same time. This is what gives the reader the sense that both authors see the spiritual journey as a natural one, one which is not unusual or based on some extreme religious or philosophical idea.
What is unnatural to both authors is accepting the dogma that other people set forth as the truth. Both authors see the journey as a process in which the individual must decide for himself or herself what the truth is, what wisdom is, what parts of any religion or philosophy apply to his or her own unique circumstances.
Another important part of the journey which is expressed in both books is the union of opposites. The Western way of seeing and thinking is generally based on a duality in which opposites are in conflict with one another. In these two books, however, we find these opposites being brought together. In Galland, for example, we find a woman ...