death-birth continuity......................

     When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.  That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts.  Mark Twain's experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty.  Something is always killed.  But what is less noticed in the arts - something is always created too.  And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it's important also to see what's created and to see the process of a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is.

-Robert M. Pirsig,  from chapter seven of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance:  An Inquiry Into Values