One of the most important things in life is to be able to find a sense of “inner stability,” because it’s this foundation that allows us to look into the nature of our experience in a clear and objective way. Unless we can find this inner stability in our lives, we’ll always be pushed around by the next experience, by the next thing that happens to us, by the next person or situation that we encounter that is difficult or challenging. Yet, for many of us, a real inner stability—on an emotional and an intellectual level—is very hard to come by.
A helpful analogy for this stability is that it is like the ballast of a boat. Deep in the bottom of every boat is a ballast, which helps prevent the boat from tipping over in the face of the wind. It keeps the boat tracking straight. For a human being, this kind of ballast, or inner stability, comes from our capacity to be open to an interior silence. It’s through this inner silence—this inner stillness—that we find a certain stability, so that we’re not always pushed around by our minds, by the conditioning that[…]