THERE IS a very famous Taoist story -- I love it tremendously. The story is about an old Taoist farmer whose horse ran away:

That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, "Maybe."
The next day the horse returned, but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbors came exclaiming at the good fortune. He said, "Maybe."
And then the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said, "Maybe."
The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of the broken leg the farmer's son was rejected. When the neighbors came in to say how fortunate everything had turned out, he said, "Maybe."

This is the attitude of a man who understands what is accidental and what is essential. The accidental is always 'maybe'; it is a 'perhaps'. You cannot be certain about it, you need not be certain about it. People who become certain about the accidental are going to be frustrated sooner or later; their certainty is going to create much frustration for them. Their certainty will create expectations, and they cannot be fulfilled -- because the universe is not there to fulfill your expectations. It has its own destiny. It is moving towards its own goal. It does not care about your private goals.
All private goals are against the goal of the universe itself. All private goals are against the goal of the Whole. All private goals are neurotic. The essential man comes to know, to feel, that 'I am not separate from the Whole and there is no need to seek and search for any destiny on my own. Things are happening, the world is moving -- call it Tao -- He is doing things. They are happening of their own accord. There is no need for me to make any struggle, any effort; there is no need for me to fight for anything. I can relax and be.'
The essential man is not a doer. The accidental man is a doer. The accidental man is, of course, then in anxiety, tension, stress, anguish, continuously sitting on a volcano -- it can erupt any moment, because he lives in a world of uncertainty and believes as if it is certain. This creates tension in his being: he knows deep down that nothing is certain. A rich man has everything that he can have, and yet he knows deep down that he has nothing. That's what makes a rich man even poorer than a poor man.
A poor man is never so poor because still he has hopes: some day or other, destiny is going to shower blessings on him; some day or other he will be able to arrive, to achieve. He can hope. The rich man has arrived, his hopes are fulfilled -- now, suddenly, he finds nothing is fulfilled. All hopes fulfilled, and yet nothing is fulfilled. He has arrived and he has not arrived at all -- it has always been a dream journey. He has not moved a single inch.
A man who is successful in the world feels the pain of being a failure as nobody else can feel it. There is a proverb that says that nothing succeeds like success. I would like to tell you: nothing fails like success. But you cannot know it unless you have succeeded. When all the riches are there that you have dreamt about, planned about, worked hard for, then sitting just amidst those riches is the beggar -- deep inside empty, hollow; nothing inside, everything outside.
In fact, when everything is there outside, it becomes a contrast. It simply emphasizes your inner emptiness and nothingness. It simply emphasizes your inner beggarliness, poverty. A rich man knows poverty as no poor man can ever know. A successful man knows what failure is. At the top of the world, suddenly you realize that you have been behaving foolishly. You may not say so, because what is the point of saying it? You may go on pretending that you are very happy -- presidents and prime ministers go on pretending they are very happy; they are not. They are just saving their faces. Now, what to say? There is no point even in saying anything -- they are not true.
In the older ages, people were truer, more authentic. Buddha was a prince, he was going to be the emperor, but he realized that there is nothing in it. He could have pretended. Mahavir was a prince; he was going to be the emperor. He realized that there is nothing in it. They simply declared their realization to the world. They simply said that riches have failed, that kingdoms are not kingdoms; that if you are really seeking the kingdom, you will have to seek somewhere else, in some other direction.
In this world there is no way to arrive.