In a time of violence and ecological catastrophes, talking about beauty may seem incongruous, even scandalous. Yet as François Cheng suggests, this is actually the most appropriate time to revisit a subject that was a philosophical mainstay for millennia. Cheng's five meditations carry the reader from the understanding of beauty being in the mind of the beholder to its intimate relationship with the sacred, both from a Western and Taoist perspective. Along the way, he draws inspiration from China's natural wonders as well as quotations by Keats, Dostoevsky, Lao-tzu, Baudelaire, and Aristotle.