You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are.
— Benjamin Hoff
Dreamy Tao Of Pooh quotations
Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you've got.
The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard - one that thinks too much.
But isn't the knowledge that comes from experience more valuable than the knowledge that doesn't? It seems fairly obvious to some of us that a lot of scholars need to go outside and sniff around - walk through the grass, talk to the animals. That sort of thing.
Everything has its own place and function.
That applies to people, although many don't seem to realize it, stuck as they are in the wrong job, the wrong marriage, or the wrong house. When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don't belong.
While Eeyore frets ... ... and Piglet hesitates ... and Rabbit calculates ... and Owl pontificates ...Pooh just is.
"What's that?" the Unbeliever asked. "Wisdom from the Western Taoist," I said. "It sounds like something from Winnie-the-Pooh," he said. "It is," I said. "That's not about Taoism," he said. "Oh, yes it is," I said.
If people were superior to animals, they'd take good care of them," said Pooh.
A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn't really care, wisdom does.
It is hard to be brave, when you're only a Very Small Animal.
When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong.
You also know where you don't belong.
Things just happen in the right way, at the right time.
At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, 'This isn't supposed to be happening this way,' and trying harder to make it happen some other way.
The wise are not learned, the learned are not wise.
The masters of life know the way, for they listen to the voice within them, the voice of wisdom and simplicity, the voice that reasons beyond cleverness and knows beyond knowledge.
To know the way, we go the way, we do the way.
The way we do, the things we do, it's all there in front of you. But if you try too hard to see it, you'll only become confused. I am me and you are you. As you can see; but when you do the things that you can do, you will find the way. The way will follow you.
Sourness and bitterness come from the interfering and unappreciative mind.
Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet. That is the message of The Vinegar Tasters.
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.
Enjoy the simple, the natural and the plain.
Along with that comes the ability to do things spontaneously and have them work.
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.
A Fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
A well-frog cannot imagine the ocean, nor can a summer insect conceive of ice.
How then can a scholar understand the Tao? He is restricted by his own learning.
Through working in harmony with life's circumstances, Taoist understanding changes what others may percieve as negative into something positive.
The play-it-safe pessimists of the world never accomplish much of anything, because they don't look clearly and objectively at situations, they don't recognize or believe in their own abilities to overcome even the smallest amount of risk.
Now, scholars can be very useful and necessary, in their own dull and unamusing way. They provide a lot of information. It's just that there is Something More, and that Something More is what life is really all about.
The wise know their limitations; the foolish do not.
When you do the things that you can do, you will find a way.
A way of life that keeps saying 'Around the next corner, above the next step,' works against the natural order of things and makes it so difficult to be happy and good.
Cleverness, after all, has its limitations.
Its mechanical judgments and clever remarks tend to prove inaccurate with passing time, because it doesn't look very deeply into things to begin with.
To Buddha, the second figure in the painting, life on earth was bitter, filled with attachments and desires that led to suffering.
There are things about ourselves that we need to get rid of;
there are things we need to change. But at the same time, we do not need to be too desperate, too ruthless, too combative. Along the way to usefulness and happiness, many of those things will change themselves, and the others can be worked on as we go. The first thing we need to do is recognize and trust our own Inner Nature, and not lose sight of it.