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and slaves cannot live without masters -- they need each other, they are complementary. Just like men and women, they are complementary. The other is required for their fulfillment.
Don't be either. Then who are you? Suddenly you disappear because then you are not significant at all, nobody depends on you, you are not needed.
There is a great need to be needed. Remember, you feel good whenever you are needed. Sometimes, even if it brings misery to you, even then you love to be needed.
A crippled child is confined to bed and its mother is constantly worried about what to do: I have to serve this child and my whole life is being wasted. But still, if this child dies, the mother will feel lost, because at least this child needs her so totally that she has become important.
If there is nobody who needs you, who are you? You create the need to be needed. Even slaves are needed.
TAO THEREFORE DESIRED
NEITHER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS
NOR BE INFLUENCED BY THEM.
THE WAY TO GET CLEAR OF CONFUSION
AND FREE OF SORROW
IS TO LIVE WITH TAO
IN THE LAND OF THE VOID.
This middle point is the land of the void, or the door to the land of the void -- as if you are not, as if nobody needs you, and you don't need anybody. You exist as if you are not. If you are not significant the ego cannot persist. That is why you go on trying to become significant in some way or other. Whenever you feel that you are needed, you feel good. But this is your misery and confusion, and this is the base of your hell.
How can you be free? Look at these two extremes. Buddha called his religion the middle path, MAJJHIM NIKAYA. He called it the middle path because he said that mind lives in extremes. Once you remain in the middle the mind disappears. In the middle there is no mind.
Have you seen a tightrope walker? Next time you see one, observe. Whenever the tightrope walker leans towards the left, he immediately has to move towards the right to balance; and whenever he feels he is leaning too much to the right, he has to lean towards the left.
You have to go to the opposite to create balance. So it happens that
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