The book starts with a description of the
vinegar tasters, which is a painting portraying the three great eastern thinkers,
Confucius, the
Buddha, and
Laozi over a vat of vinegar. Each tasting the vinegar of "life," Confucius finds it sour, the Buddha finds it bitter, but Laozi, the traditional founder of Taoism, finds it satisfying. Then the story unfolds backing up this analogy. Hoff presents Winnie-the-Pooh and related others from
A. A. Milne's stories as characters that interact with him while he writes
The Tao of Pooh, but also quotes excerpts of their tales from Milne's actual books
Winnie-the-Pooh and
The House at Pooh Corner, in order to exemplify his points to the reader and the characters. Hoff uses many of Milne's characters to symbolize ideas that differ from or accentuate Taoist tenets.
Winnie-the-Pooh himself, for example, personifies the principles of
wu wei, the Taoist concept of "effortless doing," and
pu, the concept of being open to, but unburdened by, experience, and it is also a metaphor for natural human nature. In contrast, characters like Owl and Rabbit over-complicate problems, often
over-thinking to the point of confusion, and
Eeyore pessimistically complains and frets about existence, unable to just
be. Hoff regards Pooh's simpleminded nature, unsophisticated worldview and instinctive problem-solving methods as conveniently representative of the Taoist philosophical foundation. The book also incorporates translated excerpts from various prominent Taoist texts, from authors such as
Laozi and
Zhuang Zhou. However, one poem included in the book attributed to
Lu Yu of the Tang Dynasty was actually written by Song Dynasty poet
Lu You. ==Reception==