tao
Tao is totality. Totality is not perfect, it is always imperfect -- because it is always alive. Perfection is always dead -- anything that becomes perfect is dead. How can it live? How can it live when it has become perfect? -- it has no need to live. It has denied the other part.
Life exists through the tension of the opposites, the meeting of the opposites. If you deny the opposite you can become perfect but you will not be total, you will miss something. Howsoever beautiful Buddha is, he misses something. Lao Tzu is not so beautiful, not so perfect.
Buddha and Lao Tzu are both standing before you; Lao Tzu will look ordinary and Buddha extraordinary, superb. But I tell you: thousands of Buddhas exist in Lao Tzu. He is deeply rooted in the earth -- he is rooted in the earth, and he is standing high in the sky; he is both, heaven and earth, a meeting of the opposites.
There are three words to be remembered: one is dependence, another is independence, the third is interdependence.
Buddha is independent. You are dependent: a husband dependent on his wife, a father dependent on his son, an individual dependent on society -- thousands of dependencies. You are dependent. A Buddha stands like a peak -- independent. He has cut all the ties with the world: with the wife, with the child, with the father -- everything he has cut. He has renounced all -- a pillar of independence. You are part; Buddha is part, the other part. You may be ugly -- he is beautiful. But his beauty exists only because of your ugliness. If you disappear Buddha will disappear. He looks wise because of your stupidity; if you become wise he will no more be wise.
Lao Tzu is the phenomenon of interdependence -- because life is interdependent. You cannot be dependent, you cannot be independent -- both are extremes. Just in the middle, where life is a balance, is interdependence. Everything exists with everything else, everything is interconnected. Hurt a flower and you hurt a star. Everything is interconnected, nothing exists like an island. If you try to exist like an island -- it is possible, but it will be an unearthly phenomenon, almost a myth, a dream. Lao Tzu believes in interdependence. He says: Take everything as it is, don't choose.
It seems to be simple and yet the most difficult thing, because the mind always wants to choose. The mind lives through choice. If you don't choose the mind drops. This is the way of Lao Tzu. How to drop the mind? -- don't choose! That's why he never prescribes any meditation, because then there is no need for any meditation.
Don't choose, live life as it comes -- float. Don't make any effort to reach anywhere. Don't move towards a goal; enjoy the moment in its totality and don't be bothered by the future or the past. Then a symphony arises within your soul, the lowest and the highest meet in you, and then -- then you have a richness.
If you are only the highest you are poor, because you are like a hill which has no valleys: it is a poor hill. Valleys give depth and valleys give mystery; in valleys abides the very poetry. The peak is arithmetical; it is plain. In the valley move the shadows, the mysteries. Without a valley a peak is poor, and without a peak a valley is poor, because then there is only darkness. The sun never visits it; it is damp and gloomy and sad. The richest possibility is to be a peak and a valley together.