March 26, 2025 • 30 mins
You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
'The Tao Of Pooh & The Te Of Piglet' by Benjamin Hoff is a light read interpreting Taoism through the lens of A. A. Milne's 'Winnie The Pooh' characters. Core concepts such as The Way & Wu Wei are explored and why certain characters embody various aspects of the religion. It's told via the author interacting with the characters & recounting passages both from the original Pooh stories but also the 3 main Taoist teachers.
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Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:35) Themes/Questions
(00:18:56) Author & Extras
(00:25:06) Summary
(00:27:20) Value 4 Value
(00:29:00) Join Live!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyrin Down (00:00):
You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
(00:11):
Welcome, everyone. All you piglets out there, mere mortalites, in fact, to another edition of the mere mortals book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 03/26/2025
at 11AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday. And as you might surmise, this is the podcast where I rant and rave about the current modern politics.
(00:32):
There, new politicians.
Okay. No. I'm not gonna be doing that today. Although our author actually, funnily enough, did a little bit of that in the book that we have today,
The Tao of Pooh and the Day of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff.
Now this book was originally published in 1982,
that being The Tao of Pooh, the Tao. I'll I'll pronounce it correctly, the Tao.
(00:54):
And
the second section of this book, the day of piglet, was actually published in 1992
with this combined version that I have in front of myself here published in 1994.
So with the two of these together, it's about 424
pages.
Took me about five hours reading. It's not super, super dense because you do also have these, like, little
(01:16):
illustrations of piglets and poo and all the,
the woods that they were in and and things like this. So it's not a long book. You can get through it pretty quickly.
And it is a rather light read as well. It's not,
dense in terms of the information provided,
because it's interpreting,
Daoism through the lens of,
(01:38):
a a Milnes.
I believe that's how you pronounce his name. Well, we need the Pooh characters. So core concepts such as what is the way,
Wu Wei, Daoism in general,
are interpreted through these characters, and we see how they are enacting some of the principles,
particularly,
Pooh and Piglet, hence why they are in the titles.
(02:00):
So we see also how it's presented with the author himself
interacting with the characters as if they're in real life as well
before also providing
quotes from particularly the Winnie the Pooh stories,
as well as from other, you know, Daoism texts,
as well as other just random people in in everyday life who have lived,
(02:23):
you know, recon reconstructing things and,
I suppose just presenting,
you know, Dowsum in general. What is it? Which I guess gets us on to our main theme for today.
What a philosophy can be learned from Winnie the Pooh? What Dowsum
practices are demonstrated in particular? So
we're gonna be upfront in that this section is not gonna be super objective.
(02:46):
And
part of the reason for this is because of the way it's structured, which is a little bit chaotic, to be honest. So
my observations
are gonna kind of reflect that of the internal structure because it alternates between,
you know, on one page, the the author talking to Winnie the Pooh and the characters,
and then
providing
(03:06):
a a snippet from one of their stories,
interpreting that, and then jumping over to a quote from a DAOZN master and then jumping back to him explaining what he thinks has happened,
quotes from Henry David Thoreau, for example, in Walden is pretty often,
as well as in the piglet section offering a lot of modern cultural observations and kind of talking, as I mentioned, about, like, politics of all things, which is just like, okay. Well, yeah. Interesting. So first of all, DAOZN. What is it? And
(03:38):
he presents, I guess, the basic precepts of DAOZN
through how Poo behaves.
So what you'll see is how
Poo doesn't get flustered over, you know, hypothetical
heffalumps that they think might exist,
even if they fall into a heffalump hole
and piglets getting super worried.
When bad things
(03:59):
happen, he usually problem solves without
worrying about the problem is very kind of action orientated,
type of mindset, such as when one of the characters, I think it was a room maybe was floating down the stream and he used a bamboo pole to to help save him and make a bridge.
He doesn't let piglets concerns,
(04:19):
I guess, sway his inner tranquility, which he has. He's very much
part of him. He he knows who he is. He's a poo bear, you know, and he's not
as shameful about that or his, you know, insatiable desire for honey, for example.
Yet he's also not a monk sheltering himself from
(04:40):
the world and, you know, trying to find this inner tranquility.
He just is is I guess the the to put it in a in a simple sentence. He just is and he has this childlike curiosity,
which
is part of what Daoism is is talking about a lot, which is finding this like inner
childlike,
(05:00):
joy of the world.
And
sure, you can experience emotions such as sadness, such as disappointment,
anger, all of these things.
But
it's not like
when you experience those, you experience them, but you don't cling to them. You don't hang on to them. You don't
let them affect the inner workings of your mind and ruminate on them, I suppose, is probably the best way of saying that. So that's kind of dowsing encapsulated in the character of poo and some of the ways that he behaves.
(05:32):
Piglet section is a lot longer and more about what not to do, I would say. So
the main simple idea
is of turning your weakness into strength via changing your mindset. So we see with Piglet, he is very anxious and he's continually putting himself down, saying how he's just a small animal in a big, big world.
(05:54):
We see
how he behaves with the heffalump situation
where he's super nervous and, and scared of this, you know, hypothetical thing, which they kind of just created in their mind.
Reinterpreting
the situation
is likely
a better way of trying to solve your problems rather than eliminating
whatever it is that you're feeling. So,
(06:17):
we see this in some examples where
a situation will happen in particular
the when when they're in Al's house and it gets knocked over and they're all kind of worrying like, what are we going to do? How are we going to get out except for poo? Because poo is just like, you know, being poo, just casually whatever I'm here.
(06:39):
And then he kind of gets some encouragement and it's like, look, Piglet, you're scared, but you can use your your smallness to your advantage and you can get out of the, the letterbox.
And so they managed to get him out and, you know, with the help of Pu and Al. And then he becomes the hero because he tells everyone else and then they free them and, you know, la de da. Awesome. So we kind of see, I guess,
(07:02):
Tay or day means virtue in action is is what the interpretation of that into English would be.
And what we see with Piglet is he manages to transform himself during the books and during the stories from this anxious character into one who is,
certainly, maybe not permanently,
(07:24):
more
courageous
and accepting of himself and his smallness,
but certainly
has changed its outlook where his nature, he doesn't worry about it as much and is even thankful at times of of who he is. So this is kind of the the DAO and the day, that we see.
Now there's many kind of, like, little subchapters within this book of talking about, you know, Colston pie, Busy Backs, and that sort of bear,
(07:52):
all of these sorts of things which were just trying to be examples, I guess, of trying to explain the DAOZN, but that's probably be about as far as it really went. It doesn't get into
very, very deep concepts here. It's it's pretty light. So
throughout the book, the author praises the philosophy of the East and is really denouncing the philosophy of the West, I guess, or certainly
(08:14):
the the way that Westerners live, and we'll get on to him and who he was shortly.
What I personally like about Eastern philosophy is what he kind of gets at the heart here here of which is of suffering and in particular, the suffering that we cause ourselves. I think there's a lot of suffering in life that is unavoidable.
(08:37):
We're all going to get sick, experience pain
of various sorts throughout our lives. And if it's not us, then people that we love,
and you can get that kind of secondhand suffering of grief. And when someone passes away who's close to you, things like this. But there's a lot of suffering that we cause, which is really not necessary and
(08:59):
in is is caused by ourselves as well of ruminating things, of worrying about the promotion of are you attractive or not? And
which is not linked to direct, like, pain sensations in the body, for example, and things like this. So
what I personally like about DAOISM and Eastern philosophies in general is they they have a lot of
(09:22):
unique insights on consciousness
of why we do this to ourselves, some potential remedies of how we can,
alter our ways of thinking
to to prevent this, to stop the unnecessary
suffering suffering.
They, I guess, would probably claim that all suffering can be ameliorated, can be,
(09:42):
dispensed with,
in certain respects. And this is that concept of Nirvana
that's not really talked about in the book,
nor is the Buddha,
because, you know, this is talking the people who are mentioned are more like,
Chuang Tse, Laozi,
and so I think his name's the Golden Emperor. I've forgotten the the other famous Daoist
(10:05):
author. So
the Western version is kind of more along the lines of self development
or of continual progress of goal setting and things like this, which whilst can
affect your your mood and can certainly bore you up, A lot of the time I feel like it's and I've used this analogy in the past. You might have some mold on the wall and you can paint over it and make it look nice, but the mold will eventually come back.
(10:33):
Dows them, I don't think is
as much of a the if I had to describe that,
Dows them also is not a permanent fix, but it's a more lighthearted way of doing it where instead of, you know, trying to cover up or hide the mold or can change its nature, it's like, oh, okay. The mold is part of the house and we'll we'll, you know, perhaps change the other other portions of the wall to look green so that it is blending in something like that.
(11:03):
You know, not the perfect analogy because mold can also kill you. And so maybe you want to do something about it. But
that's, I
guess,
one aspect of of
Eastern philosophy, which perhaps isn't helpful. And there are certainly
aspects in here which I think are interesting for their
(11:24):
the way that
they're not better than Western philosophy. I've noticed a lot of judgment at times, in this book in particular.
He's judging,
judging of certain people,
particularly Westerners who are, you know, doing their thing, goal setting, trying to progress forward in life and self development and things like that. And
(11:46):
he particularly makes fun of people like the lonely nomad cowboy, the restless pioneer
of the overzealous, hardworking Puritan.
And the thing that I find interesting about that is what if that is those people's nature? What if that they've found the optimal path
of working really hard
and that is what they're meant to be doing in life? That is, you know, they are experiencing less suffering in life because of the way they've chosen to live.
(12:13):
And I think there is a lot of
judgment in certain types of, oh, this person is behaving like this. And whilst it might not be suited for
ninety five percent of people, I think it could work for five percent of people.
And
there is a very hard nosed stance about,
Western culture in many ways
(12:34):
without appreciating some of the benefits that it has. So,
you know, I think that that's one of the ways where it's like, you know, describing those people as busy backsons. And this is a a character where it's, you know, from a joke because,
Peter,
I've forgotten the the boy's name, the the young
Jackson Robinson. I've, I've forgotten his name. Jesus. I read it, like, 50 times, and
(12:58):
and, it's it's just gone for me.
Anyway, he he, his spelling is rather poor. And he said he was gonna he was busy, and he's gonna be back soon. But he misspelled it, and so it said BusyBaxon. And everyone's like, who's this BusyBaxon character?
And they attach things to him saying like, oh, he's like this crazy guy who's, you know, doing all of these things, what whatnot. So,
(13:22):
there are relatively
little actual concepts within this book of
the DAO of day and of Wu Wei.
I actually don't like Wu Wei. This is another kind of, you know, sour point for me on this, which is
in the example he gives of the book is
Piglet and Pooh, and they're going to Eeyore's to give him some birthday presents because it's his birthday. And, you know, Eeyore's Eeyore, he's always mopey and and sad and talking bad about himself and of other people as well. He's always kind of, you know, trying to to be the damp rag. Not trying to be. He is the damp rag, the wet towel in any any conversation.
(14:01):
And
they go to him, and they're like, we'll do something nice. We'll bring him some birthday presents. And then they
don't. You know, poo eats all of the honey,
that he brought and piglet,
like, kind of forgets or he was going to get some flowers, but he doesn't really do it well.
And so they both get there and they're like, oh, shit. Well, not really. The piglets like, ah, shit, We should have done better. And Pooh's just like, ah, whatever it is, it is what it is. You know, this is what will be will be.
(14:30):
And,
in this case is saying, like, this is Wuwei. You know, Pooh is in Wuwei. You You just live in the in the moment. Everything's awesome. And sure, it works out for them because Eeyore loves the presents because he, you know, goes and uses the the empty honey bowl to put the flowers in and take them out and all sorts of things like this.
And I'm just going like,
(14:51):
I feel this is unrealistic.
I feel the more likely situation in this would be, you know, someone's disappointed in that you've shown little effort in celebrating their birthday
of,
and you actually
caused them
concern, harm for your
selfishness, for your lack of foresight. And you you wanna know why I say this? Because I did this to my dad accidentally the other day
(15:16):
for his birthday. And
it certainly was on my part. It was like, oh, you know what? I that was my fault. I I,
you know, was selfish in
what I wanted to do on that day and
through a miscommunication
as well.
It ended up me,
hurting his feelings a little bit. And this is, I feel, way more realistic. So I could have been all woo way about it and just been like, oh, you know, it was what it was. It happened how it happened. But then
(15:44):
I don't jive with that concept because I think the more likely thing is, okay. No. You you actually were just being selfish. So where does the concept of poos,
kind of living in the moment,
lack of forethought, carelessness,
where where it's the boundary point of where that's actually
(16:04):
not a good thing and he's, you know, hurting relationships, making other people feel bad. Is that dowsing? Is that the way? Is that the way?
I
wouldn't be particularly happy if if that was
how it was. And,
this is the hard bit of of a lot of religions is they they say a lot of, like, nice things, but
(16:26):
really knowing how to interpret it, apply it to any given situation is pretty damn hard, to be honest.
So his lapse of lackadaisical
sloppiness,
doesn't seem like the balanced middle path
versus, you know, the she'll be right mentality of,
or overwiring mentality of, you know, we've got to do everything perfect. So yeah. And unfortunately,
(16:51):
I guess just to end this off, there is a rather strong bent against science,
which leaves the door open for more
standard religious claims, which are a bit wacky a little bit out there. In this one, for example, you will find claims of telepathy.
You'll find claims that we were all vegetarian back in the past,
(17:12):
and we lived in a utopia
before we developed an ego.
I'd never heard of this in Dowsen before. I'm not sure if this is just the author's
addition to that.
The getting even crazier,
we had longer lifespans in the past, such as the documented
seventeen seventy seven to 1933
Chinese '2 hundred and '50 '6 year old,
(17:34):
Li Chung Yun,
with
claims that this is doable for all of us.
And if we just lived
more in the in the Dow and in the way,
I very much doubt that. And the documents
of this gentleman, I looked a bit into it and it's like, I don't I don't think that's
(17:56):
particularly
particularly
hard evidence that this guy actually lived that long.
And everything
that we know about science and the way the body works and documented history suggests that it's rather unlikely that this man lived multiple hundreds of years. So
there's just some
(18:17):
other unverifiable
vagaries as well of earth angels, nature spirits, perfected spirits, the age of perfect virtue. There's a whole lot in there where it's like,
okay. Alright. You know, Dowsom's nice at all. I like what its insights on
the nature of suffering, how one might be able to think their way out of it or
do things in their life to
(18:40):
help reduce that mental suffering that we cause ourselves.
But when it comes to claims on the universe and how things actually work,
the
I'd I'd I'll stick to Western science for that one. Thank you very much. So let's jump on to the author himself.
Benjamin Hoff,
American born in 1946,
(19:01):
seemed like a rather eccentric gentleman,
who had many hobbies related to artistry
of
music, of
gardening, architecture, tai chi, and obviously, he was interested in the Dallas religion.
He wrote five books in the nineteen eighties or
(19:21):
1980 and 1990 period. Two of them being very popular, that being the the Daofu in particular and the day of Piglet,
which was a kind of follow-up later on,
which I believe had some success, probably
not as much as the Daofu.
And,
unfortunately, Benjamin,
it doesn't really appear to embody the calm
(19:44):
nature of DAO ism that you would expect from a a DAO master.
If you feel like diving into
some rather
whiny
stuff, check out his, his blog. It's got a rather victim mentality of,
how the the book publishing industry is awful.
How,
(20:05):
who was the authors of this? I believe this was, this one's
Egmont Egmont. But
whoever he originally published with, he had a falling out with them,
refuses
to turn any of his works into ebooks.
Reading his blog was rather eye opening going like, damn, this dude does not have much Taoism
(20:28):
in in the way that he communicates with other people,
and the way that he presents himself to the world. Maybe he spent a bit too much time with Eeyore's in his life. I'm not really sure. And this is kind of what I left out about the book, which is
the random stuff not related to dowsum, and there's a whole bunch of it.
(20:48):
The first book, the the dauph poo is pretty good.
That that sticks to what I mainly talked about, the inter interpreting Daoism through the poo characters. Okay. That's that's cool. But
then in the day of Piglet, like, it started to randomly just chuck in some stuff. So for example,
it first talked about the modern,
(21:10):
negative news media,
which I wasn't really expecting,
then comparing,
Eeyore, Amazon's,
to woke feminists,
and then Tiggers and modern workaholic
consumerism America.
Okay. Sure. It's a little bit strange,
but I guess it's still related to the the Pooh characters. It's not really related to Dows them,
(21:33):
but sure. Okay. There's, you know, let him go whatever he wants, do whatever he wants. It's his book. And then he just goes off the deep end,
with some really unhinged stuff.
So
he was super worried about nuclear power and and radiation
in those days. And, you know, this was in the time of Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island and stuff. So you're like, okay, I can understand why someone might have concerns about this.
(21:58):
And then he talks about how we've, you know, perverted nature and the with the the big
invention of microwaves. He was worried about microwaves being in every house and how this would be a terrible thing.
He started complaining about his local politician in I don't even think it was his state, his county, or something like this.
(22:20):
Nightmare clown leaders of the Western Industrial Society killing killing mother earth.
He compared the the death of dinosaurs and
how these big lumbering dinosaurs
lost out to birds,
which I'm not sure is scientifically
correct in the way of
I thought it was more like the small
(22:41):
smaller reptiles which were and maybe marsupials which survived but anyway
and comparing that to how big companies
and these monolithic companies are getting outsmarted by this small, nimble companies, which
is certainly not true today. The big companies are even bigger than bigger.
He hinted of a great storm coming to destroy us all.
(23:03):
I've got a little section for you here, page 387
at the bottom. And you tell me if you feel like this sort of stuff should be in a book, about
the Winnie the Pooh characters and about dows them. So at present, billions of American tax dollars are being spent each year on preparations for war, weapons of war, industries of war, running the nation into unpayable debt while across the country, untaxed gang lords cruise about in limousines, drug pushers and psychopaths prey on neglected children, homeless grandmothers push their worldly possessions before them through the streets and shopping carts, And citizens of all ages contract pistol fever, shooting themselves and each other with handguns at the rate of sixty four per deaths per day, killing more Americans in two and one half years than did the sixteen year Vietnam War and wounding approximately one hundred thousand others yearly. And then it goes on to talk about the Soviet Union
(23:55):
of trillions of dollars in the armed forces, toxic waste
of,
what else we got here?
You know, thousands of animals and birds dying of drinking water,
mortar shells
of armored bulldozers,
and then you like so he goes through all of this. Right? And then just suddenly,
when the empire follows the wave, wrote Laozi, horses haul wagons and fertilizer through the fields. When the empire loses the way, horses haul war charts and beyond the city walls. And and then he's just got like a random
(24:26):
poem.
It's like, what the hell the hell is going on here? I had no idea what was really going on in these last sections.
What baffles me most
of all of this is just, I guess, his inability to
see his own mental state and recognize, like, this isn't DAO. This is I'm not following the way right now. Like, I'm not tranquil.
(24:47):
I'm not,
you know, experiencing,
emotions and letting them flow through me. And it's just like
an unhinged rant is just
baffling. It truly was baffling
of seeing this in a book about Dowsom and Winnie the Pooh. So let's jump onto the the summary here.
(25:07):
I honestly can't say much good about this.
It felt like I read kind of, you know, putting apart the unhinged parts.
It felt like I read about one third of the Winnie the Pooh stories, but without the full context of the story
of really getting into it,
which I would have enjoyed more.
And also
the DAOs and parts I probably would have like fleshed out a bit more.
(25:30):
It was interesting seeing him interpret
them through
these characters, so
that wasn't
particularly
bad. And maybe if the book was 400 pages of a mixture of those, it would have been good.
But, you know, the
the Dallas commentary of the poo section was was kind of perhaps it was revelatory
(25:52):
in back in the eighties
when DAO ism was unheard of in the West, when we didn't have access to all of the resources that we do thanks to modern science,
via the Internet.
And so I can see like, okay, yeah, that section was pretty good. If if the whole book was that, it would have might have been like five out of 10. But the piglet section
(26:13):
of the angry condescending
fear mongering rant against random things
Just
I don't know. Maybe maybe people enjoyed that, but I certainly didn't.
So
overall, I'm going to have to give the Daohoo and the day of Piglet two and a half out of 10.
I probably wouldn't recommend this. I can't I can't say that this is a great book to read.
(26:36):
What's some similar books? Recommendations?
I didn't mind,
Chuang Si reading reading his works.
I've also
Lao Tzu on this channel. I've done both of those before.
If you actually want a book
similar to this using philosophy
with
modern characters, there is a book called Batman and Philosophy.
(27:00):
I read that many, many years ago. Probably
how old was I? I might have been like 18, 19 or something like that. And that was that was pretty good. I enjoyed that. So and that was, I believe, more about Western philosophy.
So I would probably recommend a book like that rather than rather than this one. So
that's going to be it for today. Thank you, everyone, for joining in. This is a value for value podcast.
(27:25):
This is going to be available anytime, anywhere for anyone.
And I want to keep it that way. So there's no sponsorships on this channel. There's no,
you know, people
paying me to read certain types of books, promote their books, anything like that. This is just what I come across in my everyday life. This one actually was recommended to me by my ex girlfriend, Andrea. So thank you very much,
my ex girlfriend, Andrea. So thank you very much, Andrea, for for mentioning that. It's I love getting recommendations. Even though I didn't particularly enjoy the book, it was still fun kind of reading it. And
(27:55):
the ranting section was,
like, that's a unique thing. I haven't I haven't come across many books like that before. So,
it was certainly a different type of book.
With all of that being said, you know, I, my co host, Juan, are providing
front, and we just ask that you return it in some shape or form. Many different ways of doing this time, talent and treasure time, you know, sharing the taking the time to
(28:19):
click on the like button to share this with someone. Word-of-mouth is super important to podcasts like this
And also,
of, you know, getting the word out there, I guess, of of,
sharing it with a friend who would enjoy it. Talent, give me some book recommendations. What do you think I will like? What do you think I'm I'm missing? If there's anything I said wrong in this book or your
(28:42):
interpretations, comments of it, I would love to hear that. Comment down below or reach out out to us via any of the social media links. And then finally, Treasure, we have a PayPal link down below. And if you go to me and models podcast Com / support,
you can help support us financially
as well.
So that is it. Thank you very much for joining in. I am live, as I mentioned,
(29:03):
11AM
Australian
Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday.
What is coming up in the future?
So I will be doing probably about another six book reviews of like this until I start traveling.
When I start traveling,
I am not confident. I know for certain I'm not gonna be able to do it at a regular time on a regular day.
(29:25):
And I'm also unconfident
of how many book reviews I can actually do whilst traveling because, it's gonna be a bit different compared to now rather than when I was in Brazil.
So
look forward to, you know, another five five ish book reviews from me,
in the regular time, regular slot.
What am I reading? I'm reading Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach at the moment.
(29:47):
I've got a Peter Pan book, I think, on the way,
and I'm not too sure, actually. So,
yeah, probably some smaller books in this period, because it's gonna stuck in really busy for me. So that's it. Thank you very much for everyone for tuning in, for joining in. Hope you're having a fantastic
DAO day wherever you are in the world. Chat for now. Cara now. Bye.
You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
(00:11):
Welcome, everyone. All you piglets out there, mere mortalites, in fact, to another edition of the mere mortals book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 03/26/2025
at 11AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday. And as you might surmise, this is the podcast where I rant and rave about the current modern politics.
(00:32):
There, new politicians.
Okay. No. I'm not gonna be doing that today. Although our author actually, funnily enough, did a little bit of that in the book that we have today,
The Tao of Pooh and the Day of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff.
Now this book was originally published in 1982,
that being The Tao of Pooh, the Tao. I'll I'll pronounce it correctly, the Tao.
(00:54):
And
the second section of this book, the day of piglet, was actually published in 1992
with this combined version that I have in front of myself here published in 1994.
So with the two of these together, it's about 424
pages.
Took me about five hours reading. It's not super, super dense because you do also have these, like, little
(01:16):
illustrations of piglets and poo and all the,
the woods that they were in and and things like this. So it's not a long book. You can get through it pretty quickly.
And it is a rather light read as well. It's not,
dense in terms of the information provided,
because it's interpreting,
Daoism through the lens of,
(01:38):
a a Milnes.
I believe that's how you pronounce his name. Well, we need the Pooh characters. So core concepts such as what is the way,
Wu Wei, Daoism in general,
are interpreted through these characters, and we see how they are enacting some of the principles,
particularly,
Pooh and Piglet, hence why they are in the titles.
(02:00):
So we see also how it's presented with the author himself
interacting with the characters as if they're in real life as well
before also providing
quotes from particularly the Winnie the Pooh stories,
as well as from other, you know, Daoism texts,
as well as other just random people in in everyday life who have lived,
(02:23):
you know, recon reconstructing things and,
I suppose just presenting,
you know, Dowsum in general. What is it? Which I guess gets us on to our main theme for today.
What a philosophy can be learned from Winnie the Pooh? What Dowsum
practices are demonstrated in particular? So
we're gonna be upfront in that this section is not gonna be super objective.
(02:46):
And
part of the reason for this is because of the way it's structured, which is a little bit chaotic, to be honest. So
my observations
are gonna kind of reflect that of the internal structure because it alternates between,
you know, on one page, the the author talking to Winnie the Pooh and the characters,
and then
providing
(03:06):
a a snippet from one of their stories,
interpreting that, and then jumping over to a quote from a DAOZN master and then jumping back to him explaining what he thinks has happened,
quotes from Henry David Thoreau, for example, in Walden is pretty often,
as well as in the piglet section offering a lot of modern cultural observations and kind of talking, as I mentioned, about, like, politics of all things, which is just like, okay. Well, yeah. Interesting. So first of all, DAOZN. What is it? And
(03:38):
he presents, I guess, the basic precepts of DAOZN
through how Poo behaves.
So what you'll see is how
Poo doesn't get flustered over, you know, hypothetical
heffalumps that they think might exist,
even if they fall into a heffalump hole
and piglets getting super worried.
When bad things
(03:59):
happen, he usually problem solves without
worrying about the problem is very kind of action orientated,
type of mindset, such as when one of the characters, I think it was a room maybe was floating down the stream and he used a bamboo pole to to help save him and make a bridge.
He doesn't let piglets concerns,
(04:19):
I guess, sway his inner tranquility, which he has. He's very much
part of him. He he knows who he is. He's a poo bear, you know, and he's not
as shameful about that or his, you know, insatiable desire for honey, for example.
Yet he's also not a monk sheltering himself from
(04:40):
the world and, you know, trying to find this inner tranquility.
He just is is I guess the the to put it in a in a simple sentence. He just is and he has this childlike curiosity,
which
is part of what Daoism is is talking about a lot, which is finding this like inner
childlike,
(05:00):
joy of the world.
And
sure, you can experience emotions such as sadness, such as disappointment,
anger, all of these things.
But
it's not like
when you experience those, you experience them, but you don't cling to them. You don't hang on to them. You don't
let them affect the inner workings of your mind and ruminate on them, I suppose, is probably the best way of saying that. So that's kind of dowsing encapsulated in the character of poo and some of the ways that he behaves.
(05:32):
Piglet section is a lot longer and more about what not to do, I would say. So
the main simple idea
is of turning your weakness into strength via changing your mindset. So we see with Piglet, he is very anxious and he's continually putting himself down, saying how he's just a small animal in a big, big world.
(05:54):
We see
how he behaves with the heffalump situation
where he's super nervous and, and scared of this, you know, hypothetical thing, which they kind of just created in their mind.
Reinterpreting
the situation
is likely
a better way of trying to solve your problems rather than eliminating
whatever it is that you're feeling. So,
(06:17):
we see this in some examples where
a situation will happen in particular
the when when they're in Al's house and it gets knocked over and they're all kind of worrying like, what are we going to do? How are we going to get out except for poo? Because poo is just like, you know, being poo, just casually whatever I'm here.
(06:39):
And then he kind of gets some encouragement and it's like, look, Piglet, you're scared, but you can use your your smallness to your advantage and you can get out of the, the letterbox.
And so they managed to get him out and, you know, with the help of Pu and Al. And then he becomes the hero because he tells everyone else and then they free them and, you know, la de da. Awesome. So we kind of see, I guess,
(07:02):
Tay or day means virtue in action is is what the interpretation of that into English would be.
And what we see with Piglet is he manages to transform himself during the books and during the stories from this anxious character into one who is,
certainly, maybe not permanently,
(07:24):
more
courageous
and accepting of himself and his smallness,
but certainly
has changed its outlook where his nature, he doesn't worry about it as much and is even thankful at times of of who he is. So this is kind of the the DAO and the day, that we see.
Now there's many kind of, like, little subchapters within this book of talking about, you know, Colston pie, Busy Backs, and that sort of bear,
(07:52):
all of these sorts of things which were just trying to be examples, I guess, of trying to explain the DAOZN, but that's probably be about as far as it really went. It doesn't get into
very, very deep concepts here. It's it's pretty light. So
throughout the book, the author praises the philosophy of the East and is really denouncing the philosophy of the West, I guess, or certainly
(08:14):
the the way that Westerners live, and we'll get on to him and who he was shortly.
What I personally like about Eastern philosophy is what he kind of gets at the heart here here of which is of suffering and in particular, the suffering that we cause ourselves. I think there's a lot of suffering in life that is unavoidable.
(08:37):
We're all going to get sick, experience pain
of various sorts throughout our lives. And if it's not us, then people that we love,
and you can get that kind of secondhand suffering of grief. And when someone passes away who's close to you, things like this. But there's a lot of suffering that we cause, which is really not necessary and
(08:59):
in is is caused by ourselves as well of ruminating things, of worrying about the promotion of are you attractive or not? And
which is not linked to direct, like, pain sensations in the body, for example, and things like this. So
what I personally like about DAOISM and Eastern philosophies in general is they they have a lot of
(09:22):
unique insights on consciousness
of why we do this to ourselves, some potential remedies of how we can,
alter our ways of thinking
to to prevent this, to stop the unnecessary
suffering suffering.
They, I guess, would probably claim that all suffering can be ameliorated, can be,
(09:42):
dispensed with,
in certain respects. And this is that concept of Nirvana
that's not really talked about in the book,
nor is the Buddha,
because, you know, this is talking the people who are mentioned are more like,
Chuang Tse, Laozi,
and so I think his name's the Golden Emperor. I've forgotten the the other famous Daoist
(10:05):
author. So
the Western version is kind of more along the lines of self development
or of continual progress of goal setting and things like this, which whilst can
affect your your mood and can certainly bore you up, A lot of the time I feel like it's and I've used this analogy in the past. You might have some mold on the wall and you can paint over it and make it look nice, but the mold will eventually come back.
(10:33):
Dows them, I don't think is
as much of a the if I had to describe that,
Dows them also is not a permanent fix, but it's a more lighthearted way of doing it where instead of, you know, trying to cover up or hide the mold or can change its nature, it's like, oh, okay. The mold is part of the house and we'll we'll, you know, perhaps change the other other portions of the wall to look green so that it is blending in something like that.
(11:03):
You know, not the perfect analogy because mold can also kill you. And so maybe you want to do something about it. But
that's, I
guess,
one aspect of of
Eastern philosophy, which perhaps isn't helpful. And there are certainly
aspects in here which I think are interesting for their
(11:24):
the way that
they're not better than Western philosophy. I've noticed a lot of judgment at times, in this book in particular.
He's judging,
judging of certain people,
particularly Westerners who are, you know, doing their thing, goal setting, trying to progress forward in life and self development and things like that. And
(11:46):
he particularly makes fun of people like the lonely nomad cowboy, the restless pioneer
of the overzealous, hardworking Puritan.
And the thing that I find interesting about that is what if that is those people's nature? What if that they've found the optimal path
of working really hard
and that is what they're meant to be doing in life? That is, you know, they are experiencing less suffering in life because of the way they've chosen to live.
(12:13):
And I think there is a lot of
judgment in certain types of, oh, this person is behaving like this. And whilst it might not be suited for
ninety five percent of people, I think it could work for five percent of people.
And
there is a very hard nosed stance about,
Western culture in many ways
(12:34):
without appreciating some of the benefits that it has. So,
you know, I think that that's one of the ways where it's like, you know, describing those people as busy backsons. And this is a a character where it's, you know, from a joke because,
Peter,
I've forgotten the the boy's name, the the young
Jackson Robinson. I've, I've forgotten his name. Jesus. I read it, like, 50 times, and
(12:58):
and, it's it's just gone for me.
Anyway, he he, his spelling is rather poor. And he said he was gonna he was busy, and he's gonna be back soon. But he misspelled it, and so it said BusyBaxon. And everyone's like, who's this BusyBaxon character?
And they attach things to him saying like, oh, he's like this crazy guy who's, you know, doing all of these things, what whatnot. So,
(13:22):
there are relatively
little actual concepts within this book of
the DAO of day and of Wu Wei.
I actually don't like Wu Wei. This is another kind of, you know, sour point for me on this, which is
in the example he gives of the book is
Piglet and Pooh, and they're going to Eeyore's to give him some birthday presents because it's his birthday. And, you know, Eeyore's Eeyore, he's always mopey and and sad and talking bad about himself and of other people as well. He's always kind of, you know, trying to to be the damp rag. Not trying to be. He is the damp rag, the wet towel in any any conversation.
(14:01):
And
they go to him, and they're like, we'll do something nice. We'll bring him some birthday presents. And then they
don't. You know, poo eats all of the honey,
that he brought and piglet,
like, kind of forgets or he was going to get some flowers, but he doesn't really do it well.
And so they both get there and they're like, oh, shit. Well, not really. The piglets like, ah, shit, We should have done better. And Pooh's just like, ah, whatever it is, it is what it is. You know, this is what will be will be.
(14:30):
And,
in this case is saying, like, this is Wuwei. You know, Pooh is in Wuwei. You You just live in the in the moment. Everything's awesome. And sure, it works out for them because Eeyore loves the presents because he, you know, goes and uses the the empty honey bowl to put the flowers in and take them out and all sorts of things like this.
And I'm just going like,
(14:51):
I feel this is unrealistic.
I feel the more likely situation in this would be, you know, someone's disappointed in that you've shown little effort in celebrating their birthday
of,
and you actually
caused them
concern, harm for your
selfishness, for your lack of foresight. And you you wanna know why I say this? Because I did this to my dad accidentally the other day
(15:16):
for his birthday. And
it certainly was on my part. It was like, oh, you know what? I that was my fault. I I,
you know, was selfish in
what I wanted to do on that day and
through a miscommunication
as well.
It ended up me,
hurting his feelings a little bit. And this is, I feel, way more realistic. So I could have been all woo way about it and just been like, oh, you know, it was what it was. It happened how it happened. But then
(15:44):
I don't jive with that concept because I think the more likely thing is, okay. No. You you actually were just being selfish. So where does the concept of poos,
kind of living in the moment,
lack of forethought, carelessness,
where where it's the boundary point of where that's actually
(16:04):
not a good thing and he's, you know, hurting relationships, making other people feel bad. Is that dowsing? Is that the way? Is that the way?
I
wouldn't be particularly happy if if that was
how it was. And,
this is the hard bit of of a lot of religions is they they say a lot of, like, nice things, but
(16:26):
really knowing how to interpret it, apply it to any given situation is pretty damn hard, to be honest.
So his lapse of lackadaisical
sloppiness,
doesn't seem like the balanced middle path
versus, you know, the she'll be right mentality of,
or overwiring mentality of, you know, we've got to do everything perfect. So yeah. And unfortunately,
(16:51):
I guess just to end this off, there is a rather strong bent against science,
which leaves the door open for more
standard religious claims, which are a bit wacky a little bit out there. In this one, for example, you will find claims of telepathy.
You'll find claims that we were all vegetarian back in the past,
(17:12):
and we lived in a utopia
before we developed an ego.
I'd never heard of this in Dowsen before. I'm not sure if this is just the author's
addition to that.
The getting even crazier,
we had longer lifespans in the past, such as the documented
seventeen seventy seven to 1933
Chinese '2 hundred and '50 '6 year old,
(17:34):
Li Chung Yun,
with
claims that this is doable for all of us.
And if we just lived
more in the in the Dow and in the way,
I very much doubt that. And the documents
of this gentleman, I looked a bit into it and it's like, I don't I don't think that's
(17:56):
particularly
particularly
hard evidence that this guy actually lived that long.
And everything
that we know about science and the way the body works and documented history suggests that it's rather unlikely that this man lived multiple hundreds of years. So
there's just some
(18:17):
other unverifiable
vagaries as well of earth angels, nature spirits, perfected spirits, the age of perfect virtue. There's a whole lot in there where it's like,
okay. Alright. You know, Dowsom's nice at all. I like what its insights on
the nature of suffering, how one might be able to think their way out of it or
do things in their life to
(18:40):
help reduce that mental suffering that we cause ourselves.
But when it comes to claims on the universe and how things actually work,
the
I'd I'd I'll stick to Western science for that one. Thank you very much. So let's jump on to the author himself.
Benjamin Hoff,
American born in 1946,
(19:01):
seemed like a rather eccentric gentleman,
who had many hobbies related to artistry
of
music, of
gardening, architecture, tai chi, and obviously, he was interested in the Dallas religion.
He wrote five books in the nineteen eighties or
(19:21):
1980 and 1990 period. Two of them being very popular, that being the the Daofu in particular and the day of Piglet,
which was a kind of follow-up later on,
which I believe had some success, probably
not as much as the Daofu.
And,
unfortunately, Benjamin,
it doesn't really appear to embody the calm
(19:44):
nature of DAO ism that you would expect from a a DAO master.
If you feel like diving into
some rather
whiny
stuff, check out his, his blog. It's got a rather victim mentality of,
how the the book publishing industry is awful.
How,
(20:05):
who was the authors of this? I believe this was, this one's
Egmont Egmont. But
whoever he originally published with, he had a falling out with them,
refuses
to turn any of his works into ebooks.
Reading his blog was rather eye opening going like, damn, this dude does not have much Taoism
(20:28):
in in the way that he communicates with other people,
and the way that he presents himself to the world. Maybe he spent a bit too much time with Eeyore's in his life. I'm not really sure. And this is kind of what I left out about the book, which is
the random stuff not related to dowsum, and there's a whole bunch of it.
(20:48):
The first book, the the dauph poo is pretty good.
That that sticks to what I mainly talked about, the inter interpreting Daoism through the poo characters. Okay. That's that's cool. But
then in the day of Piglet, like, it started to randomly just chuck in some stuff. So for example,
it first talked about the modern,
(21:10):
negative news media,
which I wasn't really expecting,
then comparing,
Eeyore, Amazon's,
to woke feminists,
and then Tiggers and modern workaholic
consumerism America.
Okay. Sure. It's a little bit strange,
but I guess it's still related to the the Pooh characters. It's not really related to Dows them,
(21:33):
but sure. Okay. There's, you know, let him go whatever he wants, do whatever he wants. It's his book. And then he just goes off the deep end,
with some really unhinged stuff.
So
he was super worried about nuclear power and and radiation
in those days. And, you know, this was in the time of Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island and stuff. So you're like, okay, I can understand why someone might have concerns about this.
(21:58):
And then he talks about how we've, you know, perverted nature and the with the the big
invention of microwaves. He was worried about microwaves being in every house and how this would be a terrible thing.
He started complaining about his local politician in I don't even think it was his state, his county, or something like this.
(22:20):
Nightmare clown leaders of the Western Industrial Society killing killing mother earth.
He compared the the death of dinosaurs and
how these big lumbering dinosaurs
lost out to birds,
which I'm not sure is scientifically
correct in the way of
I thought it was more like the small
(22:41):
smaller reptiles which were and maybe marsupials which survived but anyway
and comparing that to how big companies
and these monolithic companies are getting outsmarted by this small, nimble companies, which
is certainly not true today. The big companies are even bigger than bigger.
He hinted of a great storm coming to destroy us all.
(23:03):
I've got a little section for you here, page 387
at the bottom. And you tell me if you feel like this sort of stuff should be in a book, about
the Winnie the Pooh characters and about dows them. So at present, billions of American tax dollars are being spent each year on preparations for war, weapons of war, industries of war, running the nation into unpayable debt while across the country, untaxed gang lords cruise about in limousines, drug pushers and psychopaths prey on neglected children, homeless grandmothers push their worldly possessions before them through the streets and shopping carts, And citizens of all ages contract pistol fever, shooting themselves and each other with handguns at the rate of sixty four per deaths per day, killing more Americans in two and one half years than did the sixteen year Vietnam War and wounding approximately one hundred thousand others yearly. And then it goes on to talk about the Soviet Union
(23:55):
of trillions of dollars in the armed forces, toxic waste
of,
what else we got here?
You know, thousands of animals and birds dying of drinking water,
mortar shells
of armored bulldozers,
and then you like so he goes through all of this. Right? And then just suddenly,
when the empire follows the wave, wrote Laozi, horses haul wagons and fertilizer through the fields. When the empire loses the way, horses haul war charts and beyond the city walls. And and then he's just got like a random
(24:26):
poem.
It's like, what the hell the hell is going on here? I had no idea what was really going on in these last sections.
What baffles me most
of all of this is just, I guess, his inability to
see his own mental state and recognize, like, this isn't DAO. This is I'm not following the way right now. Like, I'm not tranquil.
(24:47):
I'm not,
you know, experiencing,
emotions and letting them flow through me. And it's just like
an unhinged rant is just
baffling. It truly was baffling
of seeing this in a book about Dowsom and Winnie the Pooh. So let's jump onto the the summary here.
(25:07):
I honestly can't say much good about this.
It felt like I read kind of, you know, putting apart the unhinged parts.
It felt like I read about one third of the Winnie the Pooh stories, but without the full context of the story
of really getting into it,
which I would have enjoyed more.
And also
the DAOs and parts I probably would have like fleshed out a bit more.
(25:30):
It was interesting seeing him interpret
them through
these characters, so
that wasn't
particularly
bad. And maybe if the book was 400 pages of a mixture of those, it would have been good.
But, you know, the
the Dallas commentary of the poo section was was kind of perhaps it was revelatory
(25:52):
in back in the eighties
when DAO ism was unheard of in the West, when we didn't have access to all of the resources that we do thanks to modern science,
via the Internet.
And so I can see like, okay, yeah, that section was pretty good. If if the whole book was that, it would have might have been like five out of 10. But the piglet section
(26:13):
of the angry condescending
fear mongering rant against random things
Just
I don't know. Maybe maybe people enjoyed that, but I certainly didn't.
So
overall, I'm going to have to give the Daohoo and the day of Piglet two and a half out of 10.
I probably wouldn't recommend this. I can't I can't say that this is a great book to read.
(26:36):
What's some similar books? Recommendations?
I didn't mind,
Chuang Si reading reading his works.
I've also
Lao Tzu on this channel. I've done both of those before.
If you actually want a book
similar to this using philosophy
with
modern characters, there is a book called Batman and Philosophy.
(27:00):
I read that many, many years ago. Probably
how old was I? I might have been like 18, 19 or something like that. And that was that was pretty good. I enjoyed that. So and that was, I believe, more about Western philosophy.
So I would probably recommend a book like that rather than rather than this one. So
that's going to be it for today. Thank you, everyone, for joining in. This is a value for value podcast.
(27:25):
This is going to be available anytime, anywhere for anyone.
And I want to keep it that way. So there's no sponsorships on this channel. There's no,
you know, people
paying me to read certain types of books, promote their books, anything like that. This is just what I come across in my everyday life. This one actually was recommended to me by my ex girlfriend, Andrea. So thank you very much,
my ex girlfriend, Andrea. So thank you very much, Andrea, for for mentioning that. It's I love getting recommendations. Even though I didn't particularly enjoy the book, it was still fun kind of reading it. And
(27:55):
the ranting section was,
like, that's a unique thing. I haven't I haven't come across many books like that before. So,
it was certainly a different type of book.
With all of that being said, you know, I, my co host, Juan, are providing
front, and we just ask that you return it in some shape or form. Many different ways of doing this time, talent and treasure time, you know, sharing the taking the time to
(28:19):
click on the like button to share this with someone. Word-of-mouth is super important to podcasts like this
And also,
of, you know, getting the word out there, I guess, of of,
sharing it with a friend who would enjoy it. Talent, give me some book recommendations. What do you think I will like? What do you think I'm I'm missing? If there's anything I said wrong in this book or your
(28:42):
interpretations, comments of it, I would love to hear that. Comment down below or reach out out to us via any of the social media links. And then finally, Treasure, we have a PayPal link down below. And if you go to me and models podcast Com / support,
you can help support us financially
as well.
So that is it. Thank you very much for joining in. I am live, as I mentioned,
(29:03):
11AM
Australian
Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday.
What is coming up in the future?
So I will be doing probably about another six book reviews of like this until I start traveling.
When I start traveling,
I am not confident. I know for certain I'm not gonna be able to do it at a regular time on a regular day.
(29:25):
And I'm also unconfident
of how many book reviews I can actually do whilst traveling because, it's gonna be a bit different compared to now rather than when I was in Brazil.
So
look forward to, you know, another five five ish book reviews from me,
in the regular time, regular slot.
What am I reading? I'm reading Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach at the moment.
(29:47):
I've got a Peter Pan book, I think, on the way,
and I'm not too sure, actually. So,
yeah, probably some smaller books in this period, because it's gonna stuck in really busy for me. So that's it. Thank you very much for everyone for tuning in, for joining in. Hope you're having a fantastic
DAO day wherever you are in the world. Chat for now. Cara now. Bye.
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