A beautiful girl can dangerously distract a rider and shake him out of his state of mindfulness or total awareness, says Polish sociologist Jarosław Gibas.
He’s the author of Motorcyclism. Road To Mindfulness which shows a relationship between riding and mindfulness.
It’s like the modern version of the philosophical Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which many of us read in the 1970s.
Jaroslav says the combination of riding and mindfulness is “surprisingly amazing”.
His book addresses riders and non-riders and helps them understand the many ideas from the area of sociology, psychology, mystique of Zen and Tao philosophy.
Jaroslav says safe riders need total awareness which means you can see “absolutely everything”.
“You must be aware of all the different things going on around you, without being attracted to any of them,” he says.
“Being attracted is followed by a chain of thoughts developing; that’s enough to make you drop out of the state of presence, right into the space of a wandering mind where there is no mindfulness at all; there you find judgments and analysis. Thoughts that run will feed your ego.
When you see a beautiful girl while you’re riding your motorcycle and she turns towards you smiling, for sure your mind will be attracted by this event.
“A sequence of thoughts will appear in your head: ‘What a great girl! She smiled! Was it me she liked or was it my motorbike? I bet it was me!’ And so you go on.
“What is happening then? You’re riding your motorcycle without knowing it. Your brain has just switched over to autopilot and it’s guiding you, using behaviours and habits learned before. You are no longer aware of presence. You aren’t present anymore; you’ve stayed with the girl.
“The flight of imagination is so cool that you don’t want to stop it. Your ego has gone to the pastures of joy, without any intention of returning. But it means that you and your mind have separated. And the more pleasure your ego gets, the more serious danger is hanging above the part of you riding your motorcycle.”
Riders should find the book relevant to mindfulness topics such as presence, lack of judgement or working with our ego.
The book consists of 11 narrative chapters similar to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, starting with the story of an old biker passing on his knowledge and experience to a young biker.
It was first printed by ‘Sensus’ in Poland in April 2016 and is now in English at just $8 from the Amazon bookshop, but is only available for Kindle at the moment.
Jaroslaw has written several books about personal development, spiritual and emotional intelligence and transpersonal psychology.
Among his books are Life. Next Level. Transpersonal Coaching and the guide for bikers beguilingly titled Motorcycling In Your Forties. Instead Of A Love Affair which is unfortunately only available in Polish.
Jaroslav has been riding for “11 seasons” and owns a 2002 Honda Shadow Aero VT1100 which features on the front of Motorcycling In Your Forties.
“My motorcycle is amazing: it’s connect massive power with some lightness of conduct,” her says. “I love this bike.”
He is pictured on the cover of his new book astride a Yamaha V-Max as he was training Yamaha sales staff at the time.
“I chose V-max because this model representing some important think. It’s not for younger biker. This is too dangerous machine. To control them you need to beat your own ego. And to do this you need a mindful mind.”