Ma vividly describes Laozi's way of taking a macroscopic view: suppose a gang of workers are spread out on scaffolding, constructing a gigantic sculpted dragon. Each of them sees the dragon very clearly at close quarters, and carves with tremendous precision. But then someone steps back 300 paces from the dragon, and sees that the whole thing is out of kilter.
他生動的描述老子如何綜觀全局：一群工人分散在鷹架上雕築巨龍，每個人近距離所見的龍非常清楚，雕得異常精細，現在有人退到三百步外去看，卻看到龍歪了。