The Tao of Pooh

Benjamin Hoff's The Tao of Pooh was an interesting take on teaching people about Taoism and the ethical views that go with it. I have always felt that Winnie the Pooh was pretty wise in a mellow way. The owl and the rabbit were a bit overbearing in their intelligent ways. The owl was obviously a scholar, but it all seems to be a waste because he does not share any of his wisdom and education with others. If he does, it's usually with a select few. The Tao of Pooh talkes about P'U (the uncarved block), which is essentially the simplest that something can be. Winnie the Pooh is the epitome of an uncarved block because he is extremely simple and lacks any type of complexities. When you try to expand your knowledge like Owl and Rabbit then your happiness and satisfaction decrease. Rabbit may have a brain, but is proved to be limited in the passage of time. It is funny how piglet said that pooh doesn't have much brain but everything that he does comes out right. Keep things simple and go with the flow by following Pooh's Way (Wu Wei), which says that things are as they should be. All in all, I liked the book.

The Blizzard: Shinto Blog

I saw three segments, but I chose to write on The Blizzard, because it seemed a lot of people weren't writing about it and it seemed confusing. So here is my analysis of The Blizzard. There were four hikers climbing what seems to be a mountain and there is a terrible blizzard which was making it incredibly difficult for them to see which way they are going. The men were visually tired and made grunts for the first few minutes of the segment, until one of them said that it was getting darker and they should rest. Another man, who was seemingly stronger and more experienced told the rest that they still have a ways to go and they shouldn't rest because there's a major storm coming. He reminded them that it's only been a couple of hours since they left. The rest did not listen to him, so he continued to be on his way leaving them behind him. In the second part of the segment, the man fell from being worn-out and was almost unconscious when a strange woman approached him and covered him with a warm blanket. She kept saying that "the snow is warm" and "the ice is hot" and continued to push him back down whenever he tried to get up and leave. She was obviously trying to kill him by the use of the forthcoming storm and icy weather. After some struggle, the woman disappears and he gets back on his feet to continue hiking to his place of destination. He soon realizes that he was not far away from his destination as he thought he was.
    The woman represents the evil demons that exist in the Shinto religion. She is known as "yuki-onna" and she tried to distract the man from his goal. He told the other hikers to "get up" and strived to remind them that they are "mountain-men" and this is what they do and to not let the blizzard defeat them. He resisted the temptation from the demon woman and managed to remain pure in his objective to accomplish what he came to do. I read an article on shinto sins and one of them was "to avoid things which disrupt the group of which one is a member." I feel like he did not succumb to the demon's temptations to rest and lie down in the snow rather than continue on his journey. He fulfilled his personal duty as a "mountain-man" and he was rewarded by reaching his destination in such a short while.