Remove the dross, keep the essence?

I often hear the line “remove the dross, retain the essence,” and it always makes me feel uncomfortable. Now I’ve finally realized that this attitude itself is profoundly problematic! Follow the logic of that sentence, and on the surface you seem to be looking for “essence,” but in reality you are always picking out “dross.” People take such delight in pointing out faults that they forget what they ought to be doing instead! A whole pile of fruit, some sweet and some rotten—are you “removing the dross, retaining the essence”? First, there are so many rotten ones that you’ll never finish sorting them out; second, if you keep digging and sifting and stirring everything around, you may very well end up mashing the good fruit too; third, the more you sort, the angrier and more resentful you get, and before long you’ll probably no longer have the mood to properly savor the sweetness of the fruit; and finally, once sorting becomes a habit, you may well forget your mission and, faced with a mountain-high pile of rotten fruit you yourself have picked out, begin to feel pleased with yourself and proud of your accomplishment… Clearly, when a pile of good fruit and a pile of rotten fruit are mixed together, the smart person will choose the good fruit. Pick one out and you can taste one—delicious and nutritious; the advantages of that are understood best by your own stomach. Although those people who have picked out a mountain-sized pile of rotten fruit seem to have “remarkable results,” little do they know that their bellies are always empty.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.