When we peel away the layers of the temporary qualities of the body-mind – thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, and perceptions – at the center of our centerless being we find an unshakeable inner peace.

Do this now. Set aside your thoughts and images, memories of the past and dreams of the future. Set aside your feelings – your anger or happiness, your anxiety or depression. Set aside your gender, your age, your occupation. Set aside your beliefs, opinions, and positions. Set aside your prejudices, bigotry, and racism.

Anything you can conceive of, anything that you perceive yourself, others, or the world to be, set it all aside.

Now ask yourself, what is left?

What is left when you are void of all thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions?

A vast nothingness, quiet and still, infinite and eternal, undisturbed by any appearance or activity in the world, unaltered by any desire of the mind or body.

An unshakeable inner peace.

This is not to disparage thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions, but to acknowledge the irrefutable fact that at their source is an unshakeable inner peace. When this is recognized, all action is based on spontaneous love.