I just completed the Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, overall I found it enjoyable and easy to read; that in itself was a huge relief from the other books I have to read before the semester is up. Prior to reading this book I was not exactly ecstatic about reading anything on Taoism because I found the Tao Te Ching to be contradictory and difficult to understand. The Tao of Pooh was significantly easier to understand and, at times, thought provoking. Although, at one point during the book, I thought that the author was being overall critical of Confucianism calling it’s writing, “pompous and pretentious. (26).” I feel that perhaps it would be the opposite of the Tao to overexert your feelings in such a way.
Further into the book we came across the “Bisy Backson,” I feel that this description of American culture is precisely as I see it. The author suggests that we have gotten stuck in the unhealthy, perpetual cycle of trying to ‘save time.’ This perspective of how one should live their life is (in my opinion) making us chronically sick and neglectful. The more we don’t make time for ourselves, the unhappier we are, if we are not making time for ourselves we are probably not spending time with our families either, as a result they are probably not as happy either… and the cycle continues. Additionally, the author writes about how we make goals, this seems to be drilled into our brains and inevitably once we reach that goal we find that it really isn’t nearly as exciting as we expected so we strive for more. We just can’t be content with what’s around us.
To cure this, author suggests that we ought to go with the flow of the universe and to just float around things that come your way. As tempting as this sounds, I don’t believe this something that most humans can do. If we can ‘see the light’ and change our ways (without really trying, of course), then perhaps one day we will be wise.
So now, I will leave you with a quote from a song called ‘Wet Work’ by Q and Not U because it's awesome, made me think of Taoism/mindfulness and some people might need this reminder: “Something beautiful will always surround us, but it’s just to easy to erase.”
I think it's interesting that you don't think that Taoism ca be the solution. You do have a point, being busy all the time is something that is engrained in American culture, it's a habit, it's an addiction that we developed when we were born. While toaism seems awesome, it would be cool to float around Care free an happy letting things happen as they come, but we as a culture would have to have an uprising in order for us to even attemp to forget our ways
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you say about how hard is it for us to just "go with the flow of the univerese" I think it is too hard for people to change their mindset to such an extent, and even if they are able to do so, it is not something that can be done over night, something that most likley takes years to do I really like the quote that you found from the song, I think that's really true, and it does relate a good deal to Taoism, showing us that we are the one's capable of making things happening, and at the same time, loosing things.
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost, I love the quote that you left us with. I'm sitting here in deep thought about it! But I agree with you completely, it's rather hard to simply let go of everything, have no control and just let things flow. I think fear of the unknown is what causes that. At least if you're planning or working towards something, you know the possible outcomes.
ReplyDeleteI liked that you said something about making goals. They teach us to make goals and try to reach them, yet when we do then we just have to make more and more goals. I do not think that this is entirely bad because if we had no goals we would not be able to achieve things in life. But at the same time Taoism is saying that we just need to let things happen the way they should so in a way by making goals we are messing with nature.
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