September 20th

Counterpoint

It is blazing hot today.
Valley heat is drawn to meet the coast.
The cool days of autumn dance with false summer.
White within black, black within white.


Autumn was coming on, and yet today there is a sudden shift. It is hotter than summer. Even in the midst of a cooling trend there is its opposite. In the minds of those who follow Tao, duality in life is not clearly demarcated. There is a fuzziness at the line. Day does not have a sharp border with night. So it is with the alternations of the seasons. It is not a simple, smooth continuum from summer into autumn. There is complexity and counterpoint.
If nature is full of subtlety and even false appearances, how wise must we be in order to follow life's rhythms unerringly?


Personal Interpretation

Followers of Tao see the dual forces of nature as defining one another, and the boundaries between opposites are more blurred than we sometimes acknowledge. We may observe trends only to witness unexpected reversals. This is the nature of life. It can be difficult to sense patterns and to accept their divergence, but this is precisely what we must do if we wish to live in accordance with the principles of Tao.