The Taoist Sage

The Taoist sage is one who is perfectly attuned to the ultimate reality which lies behind the everyday world with which we are familiar in daily experience. Such a one has ceased to have egoistic intentions or purposes in any sense analogous to that in which an unenlightened person does. Rather (s)he is perfectly and spontaneously in accord with the flow of reality itself. Having no intentions, the sage does not need to use reason to work out how to implement them, and such a one will certainly be unfathomable and inscrutable to the rest of us, i.e. the unenlightened.

(introduction to Sun Tzu's The Art of War)