Regarding Robert Pirsig’s catatonic state

In the “Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, there is an interesting passage at the end of DiSanto & Steele’s commentary over Zen Buddhism (page 133):

“I put this last question to the author of ZMM. Perhaps before you set aside the Zen packet and the Eastern portion of the backpack you would like to hear his answer. He began on a general level, by talking about the connection between enlightenment and insanity. He didn’t think all insanity was a form of enlightenment or all enlightenment was a form of insanity, but he did think there was an overlap. He made reference to a description of enlightenment in a Zen monastery, contained in Phillip Kapleau’s Three Pillars of Zen, according to which the enlightened ‘sits transfixed, unable to move, as if encased in a block of ice.” Pirsig then pointed out that an unprepared psychiatrist coming upon such a scene “would immediately make diagnosis of catatonia and hospitalize the person found in this state,” whereas the Zen master tries to end the state by snapping his fingers or giving a sharp command that will ease the student out of his unpatterned reality and back into the conventional form of patterned social behavior of the monastery. It is considered a dangerous time.” At that point, in the conversation, I pressed Pirsig a bit about what a Zen master would have done in his own case, the case described in ZMM. Pirsig responded, “It’s impossible to say what a Zen master would or would not do under a given set of circumstances, but I think I would have been a lot happier if one had been around.””