The Tao Of Pooh is written differently that many books that you probably have read before. The author Benjamin Hoff uses the characters from winnie the pooh to describe many of the different types of people we see in the world today winnie the pooh being the prime example of being tao. The book begins with the descriptions of the three different people that taste vinegar and get the three different reactions by the men represent Confucianism which thought that the vinegar is sour which represented the sour things in life, Buddhism represented the bitterness in life, and Taoism which focused on the sweetness of the vinegar. Hoff uses these examples to show that even though something may taste sour in the case for confucianism, with the correct outlook, it can be something sweet instead. …show more content…
From what i understand Benjamin Hoff writes The Tao of Pooh like it is an essay for a class would be written, but what it feels more like is a proverb and explanation style like The Art Of War by Sun Tzu and a discussion form explaining what Taoism is to Pooh. The book also uses different characters like Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, and Tigger the book goes through each character to explain how they all have flaws and are not close to being tao, with the owl being the opposite of pooh and pooh being the closest to being tao, each other character has some major flaw that taoism is not.
One strong point and one downfall of this book was the easiness to grasp the concepts of taoism, granted it would have helped to watch winnie the pooh again to refamiliarize myself with the personalities of the characters in the show, it really made it easy to see how each person had personality traits that didn't align with taoism. But at the same time, the easiness of this book made it significantly harder to understand what i was reading, and in some aspects of the religion it gave me a lot more questions about what the religion is