Today's Daily Tao is:

Abstraction

When beauty is abstracted
Then ugliness has been implied;
When good is abstracted
Then evil has been implied.

So alive and dead are abstracted from nature,
Difficult and easy abstracted from progress,
Long and short abstracted from contrast,
High and low abstracted from depth,
Song and speech abstracted from melody,
After and before abstracted from sequence.

The sage experiences without abstraction,
And accomplishes without action;
He accepts the ebb and flow of things,
Nurtures them, but does not own them,
And lives, but does not dwell.

This tells me that judgement is something that the sage does without. To find beauty is to judge between beautiful and ugly. To find good is to judge between good and evil. Abstraction is judgement. The sage experiences without judging those experiences, and accepts that things are simply the way they are, without needing to be one thing or another. He nurtures his experiences, and those things he finds, but he does not own them. He lives for the moment, instead of dwelling on what might be, and what has been.

I'd like to be that sage. :-)

Categories: Taoism