Jae

1) This quote means that the words spoken by him are easy to understand and easy to put into practice. However because it is easy, it can be implied that it is straightforward, and then the quote goes onto saying that straightforward words seem paradoxical. This means that although straightforward words are easy to understand and put into practice, they are often misguiding and not what they appear to be. This applies to The Tao of Pooh and the scholars in it because scholars are a symbol of knowledge, meaning they do not merely see straightforward words as what they simply mean, meaning they see it in many different ways making things more complicated than what they really are. 2) Pooh seems to think that the scholars make simple and unimportant things very complicated by looking at all the different ways and using their knowledge to solve and figure out everything in every possible way. By doing so the scholars make things much more complicated than what they really are. This relates to the Taoist view because the Taoists believed that knowledge was not necessarily a good thing, that the more simple you are the more better off you will get. 3) The message behind Cottlestone is that things are supposed to be the way they are. This meaning everything has a purpose in a sense, and that if you attempt on using it for something other than its purpose it will not work. For example a bird can fly but a fly can’t bird; everything has its own purpose and when we try to make do with it for something other than what it was meant for it will not work. So, basically the concept of Cottlestone, deals with the idea of purpose and inner nature.