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That Sort of Bear
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Tao of Pooh, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Taoism, Nature, and Happiness
Knowledge vs. Wisdom
Self-Acceptance and Personal Growth
Western Culture and Eastern Wisdom
Summary
Analysis
In one scene from the Pooh books, Pooh and Christopher Robin are going nowhere in particular. Christopher asks what Pooh likes doing best—it’s eating—but Christopher says his favorite thing is doing nothing. He defines doing nothing as “going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”
Christopher Robin’s favorite thing is a good explanation of how wise Taoists spend their time. By doing nothing, they don’t mean just sitting in place and refusing to act at all—rather, they mean living life with no particular goal, which allows them to connect with the surprising and unexpected things they encounter in their environment.
Themes
In a passage from Chuang-tse, Consciousness asks someone named Speechless Non-Doer what it can do, think, and follow to earn the wisdom of the Tao. But Speechless Non-Doer doesn’t answer. Consciousness goes to ask someone named Impulsive Speech-Maker the same questions, and Impulsive Speech-Maker starts to talk but forgets what he is saying. Finally, Consciousness asks the Yellow Emperor, who says that the secret to the Tao is doing, thinking, and following nothing.
In Chuang-tse’s parable, Speechless Non-Doer actually gives the most accurate response to Consciousness’s question: his silence illustrates how people can find the Tao. But Consciousness cannot understand Speechless Non-Doer at first, because it’s used to receiving clear explanations of the truth, not practical illustrations of it. Meanwhile, Impulsive Speech-Maker’s confusing response shows precisely why saying and thinking too much distracts people from the Tao.
Themes
Christopher Robin, Pooh, and Chuang-tse are all talking about “the Great Secret” to happiness: nothing. (Taoists call it T’ai Hsü, or the Great Nothing.) Chuang-tse wrote that Yellow Emperor found “the dark pearl of Tao” not through Knowledge, Vision, or Eloquence, but through Empty Mind.
Hoff has argued that people’s minds and thoughts distract them from nature. He has also argued that true happiness comes from harmonizing oneself with nature. By putting these two arguments together, Hoff demonstrates that people can best find happiness when they turn off their wandering minds and distracting thoughts, so that they can focus their energy on listening to and harmonizing with nature. This is why Taoists value the Great Nothing, or the Empty Mind. This doesn’t mean rejecting nature or denying the world in order to embrace nothing. Instead, it means minimizing the mind’s interference with the world by emptying it of stray thoughts. This is what lets people actually focus on the world that surrounds them.
Themes
Similarly, after Eeyore’s tail disappeared, Owl gave Pooh complicated instructions for how to recover it, but Pooh ignored him. He went outside and noticed that Owl had a new bell-rope—it was Eeyore’s tail, which fell off in the forest. Because Pooh’s mind was empty, he noticed what was right in front of him. In contrast, “the Stuffed-Full-of-Knowledge-and-Cleverness mind” distracts itself and forgets what it’s looking at.
This scene illustrates what it actually looks like to do nothing and have an empty mind. It isn’t that Pooh literally sits around, doing nothing and refusing to think about anything. Instead, as he goes about his life, he avoids thinking about things that are distant from his immediate experience. He refuses to stuff his mind “Full-of-Knowledge-and-Cleverness” because he knows that he’s happier, wiser, and more successful if he leaves his mind empty and open to the world.
Themes
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Taoist paintings, good music, and the beauty of “fresh snow, clean air, [and] pure water” all depend on emptiness. But lots of people associate emptiness with loneliness, so they try to fill everything in. Actually, that’s when loneliness starts—when every moment is filled and life becomes a “Big Congested Mess.”
Hoff wants his readers to think differently about the concept of emptiness. Instead of thinking about it as desolation or nonexistence, they should associate it with the beauty of things in their simplest, purest, most uncomplicated form. In fact, emptiness can help people understand the P’u (simplest form) or inner nature of things.
Themes
Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan, illustrates this principle. He usually spent every day busy with meetings, events, and other royal business. But one day, when nobody showed up to a meeting, he smiled at the empty space and said it was his favorite appointment of all. Similarly, Lao-tse said that, while knowledge requires “add[ing] things every day,” the secret to wisdom is “remov[ing] things every day.” Chuang-tse wrote about a student who reached the Tao by forgetting everything.
The Hirohito parable shows that embracing nothingness is really about creating mental space for reflection and connection with the world. Lao-tse’s quote about adding and removing things from life is another warning against confusing knowledge for wisdom. By learning more and more—even if it’s about Taoism and how to be happy—people are practicing the habits that actually draw them further away from nature and their place in it.
Themes
The mind is skilled at analyzing information, but it’s most powerful when it’s empty—which allows it to be clear. If people try to trace their ideas back to their origins, they’ll always end up coming back to nothing. In fact, the most original, revolutionary ideas are often the hardest to trace back because they’re the closest to nothingness. This is also why people get good ideas after a calm night of sleep.
It's easy to assume that people should constantly learn and analyze information, just because they’re good at it. But Taoists think that humans’ greatest strength is their intuition, perception, and creativity, not their analytical skills. This is why Hoff associates creativity with nothingness: people who learn to declutter (or empty) their minds are more likely to produce genuinely great ideas and innovations.
Themes
People think that they develop more and more as they become adults, but actually, the highest level of development is “the independent, clear-minded, all-seeing Child.” In Taoism, the most wise, enlightened people are happy like children because they know the Great Nothing.
While adults are usually more developed in terms of knowledge, people with the mind of “the independent, clear-minded, all-seeing Child” are supremely developed in terms of wisdom. Such people directly and unambiguously perceive key truths about the order of the universe—or Tao. And this understanding makes them supremely happy because it shows them the beauty, value, and harmony in the world.
Themes
At the end of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, the main characters reach the enchanted grove called Galleons Lap. This represents wisdom or enlightenment. People can go there by taking “the path to Nothing.” They don’t have to go anywhere, because the enchanted forest is already there within them, wherever they already happen to be.
Just like Galleons Lap is already hidden away within the Hundred Acre Woods, the means to reach enlightenment are already within people’s minds. In fact, it lies in humans’ simplest form (or P’u), which is the form that fits their true inner nature and helps them fit into the way of the universe (or Tao). By comparing Galleons Lap to enlightenment, Hoff suggests that Winnie-the-Pooh books are more about a spiritual journey than a material one. This journey is as much for the book’s characters as for the young readers who learn life lessons from it.
Themes
