‘Stability’ (let’s use that word) of mind can be a ‘two-edged sword' as ex-l suggests. Is being unresponsive to different stimuli or mental activity always a good thing?
I think of sociopaths - very ”stable” - they have no empathy to other people's experiences. Most people will react to images of others - people laughing, eating, having sex, playing with animals etc will cause a response in the ”mirror neurones’ which reveal empathy and even lead to the viewer to physically respond in kind, smiling or salivating or whatever.
Similarly seeing, even just in photos, the the suffering of others, pain, crippled, diseased etc also will fire these mirror neurones . Recent publicised research shows that this is why people enjoy sad songs, dramas and tragedies in stories, because what we are ”enjoying” is not eh sadness or the tragedy but the stimulation of our empathy. I’d say it’s because we enjoy feeling human and connected to our fellows.
See some of the research here and
hereThere is the 1960s study comparing Vedantin yogis and Zen monks meditations, which I have referred to before. The experiment was simple, measure EEG responses of the meditators to irregular noise, in this experiment, a loud bell. The Vedantic yogis reacted less and less each time the bell rang, until eventually no response at all, they were able to shut it out. The Zen monks however, kept responding identically every time it rang. One is ‘absence', the other ‘presence' of mind.
It also reminds me of a story I heard on the radio, two men from Bengal who were here promoting a book they’d written about their lives. They were childhood friends who grew up in poverty, both disabled in different ways. One was blind, the other was, from memory, crippled physically, legs I think. One of them, the blind one, decided to become a yogi and went into the forest. He became absorbed in his ”deep meditation” so much so that he did not eat for many weeks. When the monsoons came and he had not returned as he had said, his friend formed a search party and went looking for him.
They eventually found him, still meditating but where he was, in a bit of a gully, he had sat still so long and was so weakened by lack of food and so "transcended” in mind (out of it!) that he hadn’t noticed the rainwaters had covered him in so much dirt and leaves that he was buried up to his chin and would soon be drowned as the rains continued. After revivification he spoke of his blissful state of mind.
I thought to myself, ”that’s like being asleep at the wheel”.