I approached this with curiousity as it is an intriguing idea to use characters from a beloved childrens book to illustrate the basic principles of Taoism, and despite my reluctance to study the book intently for the taoist teachings it offers especially as it felt quite a childlike way to explain something, I find that ever since I've finished the book, little occurrences happen with which I can accurately assign a taoist principle.
The ideas offered are the very basics of taoism but the main point of taoism is also that the simplest things and methods are the best, so in a way, you could argue it was surprisingly thorough.
One major concept I garnered from the book is that we as humans should stop trying to twist other people, other things, other ideas to conform with how we want it to be. One example of this from the book was when a man became annoyed with a tree on his property because the trunk was all gnarled and therefore would not be good for milling. He complained the tree was useless.
The reply was that even though it was not valuable as lumber, you could still make use of the tree and shelter from the sun or rain under its branches or just simply admire the feat of nature that went into its creation. It is useless only because he wanted to turn it into something that it was not, and didn't appreciate it for the qualities it already had in its natural form.
I really like that principle and if you think about it, you can apply that to many things in our everyday lives today. Hoff illustrated this one by using Pooh Bear's Cottleston Pie riddle and specifically the first verse including "A fly can't bird but a bird can fly". Essentially, we can't fit square pegs into round holes - things are just what they are.
There are many other principles explained and then cross-referenced with examples from Pooh. As I said before, reading it all felt rather too simplistic and more like a new Pooh Bear story then an explanation of taoism but that is the beauty of the way this has been written. It is easy to read - my eleven year old has read it, and you don't realise until later just how much of the teachings you really took in.
To be fair, to cement them in my mind, I suspect a second reading is in order but at only 150 pages long, that will be just a quick days work.
There is also The Te of Piglet which I might try to keep an eye out for. This idea of using a bear of little brain to explain things is quite a nice way to be introduced to new ways of thinking and if you have an open mind, then I recommend giving this one a try.
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