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When we give up our images of self-importance and our ideas of what should be, we can help things become what they need to be.

Benjamin Hoff

Whether many people realize it yet or not, man, the Inferior Animal, has by now proved himself incapable of keeping his own species – and others – alive for very much longer. So the earth has begun its own plan to set things right.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Animals Men People
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.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Messages Mind Sweet
When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don’t belong.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Belong Job Respect Tao
While Eeyore frets … … and Piglet hesitates … and Rabbit calculates … and Owl pontificates …Pooh just is.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Owl Piglet Rabbits
Pooh is able to accomplish what he does because he is simpleminded.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Able Minded Simple Tao
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.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Believe Play Risk
Through working in harmony with life’s circumstances, Taoist understanding changes what others may percieve as negative into something positive.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Appreciation Perspective Understanding
Those who think that the rewarding things in life are somewhere over the rainbow ‘burn their toast a lot,’ said Pooh
BENJAMIN HOFF

Life Rainbow Things Thinking
Treat gain and loss the same.’ Don’t be Intimidated. Don’t make a Big Deal of anything – just accept things as they come to you.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Accepting Gains Loss
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.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Animal Needs Pooh Tao
Modern man’s difficulties, dangerous beliefs and feelings of loneliness, spiritual emptiness,and personal weakness are caused by his illusions about, and separation from, the natural world.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Loneliness Men Spiritual
Unfortunately complaining is one thing Eeyores are not afraid to do. They grudgingly carry their thimbles to the Fountain of Life, then mumble and grumble that they weren’t given enough.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Complaining Enough Fountain
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.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Dull Information Way
To Buddha, the second figure in the painting, life on earth was bitter, filled with attachments and desires that led to suffering.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Attachment Desire Suffering
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.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Ice Ocean Summer
One sometimes gets the impression that those intimidating words are there to keep us from understanding. That way, the scholars can appear Superior, and will not likely be suspected of Not Knowing Something.
BENJAMIN HOFF

Knowing Understanding Way

When we give up our images of self-importance and our ideas of what should be, we can help things become what they need to be.

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When we give up our images of self-importance and our ideas of what should be, we can help things become what they need to be.

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