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Enlightenment is child's play: Benjamin Hoff teaches in 'The tao of Pooh'
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I dedicate this column to the Internation Children's Book Day, April 2, 2009
"Why do the enlightened seem filled with light and happiness like children? Why do they sometimes even look and talk like children? Because they are," said Lao-tse in the "Tao Te Ching."
The greatest irony of my life, and certainly my favorite, is that it took post graduate work and study for me to learn to be a child. From having been a child without much pleasure in the hood and a high-school dropout, I stepped up in my twenties to earn a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Brandeis University while raising my three small children. Work on a masters degree with an interdisciplinary major in Social Sciences at San Francisco State University further fed my soul’s desire to better understand being human. But like any hunger it left a recurringpang that must be nourished frequently.
I've followed with reading more books than I have walls for and have attended workshops with Virginia Satir, Deepak Chopra, John Bradshaw, Wayne Dyer and a hundred others. Amidst the scholars and theorists another depth of knowledge came --from children.
The littlest mentors taught me exuberance, innocence, spontaneity, creativity, sensitivity, trust and compassion. The nature of children is to love, to be inquisitive, to explore, to wiggle and squirm – good for growing bodies and equally so for aging, stiff ones. Contrary to a common notion, negatives attributed to "childishness" are either learned from or are mimics of adult's bad behavior.
A treasured sourcebook of wisdom, from those many years ago, led me back to children as a storyteller in bookstores, libraries and classrooms. Or was it the other way round, I can’t remember for sure. In any case, especially when I grow weary of talking-heads, I return to the text that always clears some of the muddle from my mind.
In "The Tao of Pooh," Benjamin Hoff says, "Unlike other forms of life, people are easily led away from what's right before them because people have Brain, and Brain can be fooled. Inner Nature, when relied on, cannot be fooled. But many people do not look at it or listen to it, and consequently do not understand themselves very much."
Quoting from the "Tao Te Ching," Hoff writes, 'To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.' Lao-tse also tells us to return to the beginning and become a child again:
The wise are Children Who Know. Their minds have been emptied of the countless minute somethings of small learning, and filled with the wisdom of the Great Nothing, the way of the Universe. ~ Lao-tse
P’u in Chinese means tree in a thicket or wood not cut. Lao-tse called it "the Uncarved Block." Hoff says, "Pooh can’t describe the Uncarved Block to us in words; he just is it. That’s the nature of the Uncarved Block."
"When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the Uncarved Block: Life is Fun."
When I first read "The Tao of Pooh" in 1989 or so, I underlined 
that passage in brown ink and put a question mark at the end of the quote. In years since, I must have grown in my childlikeness, because now that makes me laugh. And, when I am seduced back into the world of grown-ups, they may still try to swallow me whole, but in the end, I pound with my fists on the roof of their mouth and jump out when they scream.
I strive to be stripped down and un-pedantic, except to pedantically write an occasional fun word. Like Christopher Robin with Pooh, I encourage within myself loving of everything to do with moose -- especially the stuffed kind, and even, with sadness the shot kind -- though certainly not to eat -- and, of course, everything mousse -- especially the chocolate kind. More succinctly, I surrender to the un-aged, uncomplicated soul of me.
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Diana deRegnier writes from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her articles appear on Web sites and in print publications around the world. Contact Diana at spiritlinks@comcast.net. © by Diana deRegnier 2009
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