The Tao of Pooh

Who’s Talking? Pooh is.

• Pooh: “We might find something that we weren’t looking for, which might be just what were looking for, really,”

• “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?” “What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully.It’s the same thing,” he said.

• “Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully. “Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit’s clever.” “And he has Brain.” “Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain.” There was a long silence.“I suppose,” said Pooh, “That that’s why he never understands anything.”

• …you can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count.

• “What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?” “Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best – “ and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.

Song:
How can you get very far,
If you don’t know Who You Are?
How can you do what you ought,
If you don’t know What You’ve Got?
And if you don’t know Which To Do
Of all the things in front of you,
Then what you’ll have when you are through
Is just a mess without a clue
Of all the best that can come true
If you know What and Which and Who.

Benjamin’s chat

• Hopefully your knowledge doesn’t fall under any of these:Rabbit – Knowledge for the sake of Being Clever; Owl – Knowledge for the sake of Appearing Wise; Eeyore – Knowledge for the sake of Complaining About Something.

• Sourness and bitterness come from the interfering and unappreciative mind. Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet.

• There is Something More, and that Something More is what life is really all about.

• Knowledge and Experience do not necessarily speak the same language.

• There is more to knowing than just being correct.

• The thing that makes someone truly different—unique, in fact—is something that cleverness cannot really understand.

• Things are as They Are: We make things into something else and do not use it in its proper way.

• “One disease, long life. No disease, short life.” In other words, those who know what’s wrong with them and take care of themselves accordingly will tend to live a lot longer than those who consider themselves perfectly healthy and neglect their weaknesses. So in that sense at least, a Weakness of some sort can do you a big favor, if you acknowledge that it’s there.

• Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least they do when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, “This isn’t supposed to be happening this way,” and trying hard to make it happen some other way. If you’re in tune with The Way Things Work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time. Later on, you can look back and say, “Oh now I understand. That had to happen so that those could happen, and those had to happen in order for this to happen…” Then you realize that even if you tried to make it all turn out perfectly, you couldn’t have done better, and if you’d really tried, you would have made a mess of the whole thing.

• There was a man who disliked seeing his footprints and his shadow. He decided to escape from them and began to run. But as he ran along, more footprints appeared, while his shadow easily kept up with him. Thinking he was going too slowly, he ran faster and faster without stopping, until he finally collapsed from exhaustion and died. (If he had stood still, there would have been no footprints. If he had rested in the shade, his shadow would have disappeared.)

• Practically speaking, if time saving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It’s really great fun to go somewhere where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have lots of time. Elsewhere, you’re too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won’t have to work so hard. The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can’t save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.

• The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about and opening them. Each time the goal is reached, it becomes Not So Much Fun, and we’re off to reach the next one. That doesn’t mean that the goals we have don’t count. They do, mostly because they cause us to go through the process, and it’s the process that makes us wise, happy, or whatever. If we do things in the wrong sort of way, it makes us miserable, angry, confused and things like that. The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important. Enjoyment of the process is the secret that erases the myths of Great Reward and Saving Time. By enjoying the process, we can stretch that awareness out so that it’s no longer only a moment, but covers the whole thing.

• “From caring comes courage.” We might add that from it also comes wisdom. It’s rather significant, we think, that those who have no compassion have no wisdom. Knowledge, yes; cleverness, maybe; wisdom, no. A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn’t really care. Wisdom does.

• An Empty sort of mind is valuable for finding things because it can see what’s in front of it. An Overstuffed mind is unable to. While the Clear mind listens to a bird singing, the Stuffed-Full-of-Knowledge-and-Cleverness mind wonders what kind of bird is singing. The more Stuffed Up it is, the less it can hear through its own ears and see through its own eyes. Knowledge and Cleverness tend to concern themselves with the wrong sorts of things, and a mind confused by Knowledge, Cleverness and Abstract Ideas tend to go chasing off after things that don’t matter, or that don’t exist, instead of seeing, appreciating and making use of what is right in front of it.

• Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness. Everything has to be filled in, it seems – appointment books, hillsides, vacant lots – but when all the spaces are filled, the Loneliness really begins. Then the Groups are joined, the Classes a re signed up for, and the Gift-To-Yourself items are bought. When the Loneliness starts creeping in the door, the Television Set is turned on to make it go away. But it doesn’t go away. So some of us do instead, and after discarding the emptiness of the Big Congested Mess, we discover the fullness of Nothing.