In the early Buddhist text known as the Udāna, the Buddha offers a clear image to describe why beings suffer:
“Rushing up but then too far, they miss the point; Only causing ever newer bonds to grow. So obsessed are some by what is seen and heard, they fly just like these moths — straight into the flames.”
Here, the flame is not the problem. The world is not the problem. The senses are not the problem. The suffering comes from the movement toward experience — the compulsion, the reaching, the leaning.
Just as the moth flies toward the flame because it remembers light, the mind moves toward sensation, thought, or memory because it remembers a sense of wholeness it once knew. But in the movement itself, suffering arises. The flame burns not because it is fire, but because the moth cannot help but move.
This is the Buddha’s insight.
The awakened one does not suppress the world, nor escape it, nor rearrange it. He simply does not move toward or away. He remains at the centre — aware, unstirred, unpulled. Life continues. The senses continue. Thought continues. But there is no inner movement.
This is what one calls living without leaving the ground.
The centre stays still. Even while everything changes around it.
The ground remains; all else comes and goes.
In some Hindu teachings, this unchanging ground is described as Brahman — the source that remains beyond all forms. Early Buddhism does not assert an eternal essence, but it does point to the unconditioned: awareness itself, free of grasping. Whether one calls it Brahman or the unconditioned, the meaning is the same here: the centre does not move. The movement is what creates the sense of self and the sense of separation.
To see this in your own experience, watch the moment the mind begins to move.
A sound appears. A memory appears. A sensation appears.
Before thought forms, before reaction forms, before identity forms — there is a tiny leaning. A subtle movement toward or away. This is the flame. This is the flight of the moth.
The mind moves before thought. In that movement, the sense of “I” is created. In that movement, suffering begins.
Awakening is the moment the movement does not happen.
Not because you resist it. Not because you control it. But because you see it begin.
When the movement is seen clearly, it ends. And when it ends, awareness remains.
Not as something gained. But as what was always there when nothing is moving.
This is the apple finding the ground. Not falling down, but falling inward. The end of momentum.
No one is holding the apple. The ground simply receives it.
This is where the self is not — not as an absence, but as a natural resting. Awareness is here, life continues, perception continues, but without the leaning.
The centre stays still. Even while everything changes.
This is living without leaving the ground.
Not special. Not high. Not hidden.
Just this.
The most simple thing.
The one that was always here.
From this stillness, movement in the world does not stop. The body moves, words are spoken, actions unfold, creativity happens — but without psychological leaning. There is no reaching to complete oneself. No identity driving the action. Innovation, insight, and expression arise on their own, from the ground itself. Like Einstein seeing the solution in quiet awareness, or Bach listening to the music before it is written, or the sculptor revealing what is already in the stone — the centre does not move, yet life continues to unfold from it.
This is the difference between creating from the self and creating from the centre. When the self is involved in creation, it is sustained by the subtle tension of leaning — the mind moving away from its own stillness in order to form and maintain the sense of “I.” The mind reaches outward to become something, to secure identity, to confirm itself through the result. The work becomes shaped by memory, comparison, effort, and fear. It is made from what is already known. This creativity is constructed rather than discovered. It carries the noise of the one who is trying. The result may be functional, but it cannot be free.
The self was made of movement all along.
When there is no psychological leaning, creation arises from stillness itself. The mind does not push. It does not search. It listens. The work forms the way a tree grows or a river turns — not by decision, but by unfolding. Insight appears whole, not assembled. The painter does not think about what to paint; the painting reveals itself as the next gesture. The composer does not build the music; the music arrives as something already complete. The sculptor does not invent the figure; he removes what is not it. The physicist does not calculate the discovery into existence; the answer appears as a clear image before language.
This is creation without the self. Action without the actor. Movement without leaning.
The world continues. Work continues. Expression continues. But the centre does not move.
And because nothing is being sought, nothing is being lost.
This is how one lives in the world without leaving the ground.
When more of the world begins to create from this stillness rather than from the self, the texture of life changes without needing to be engineered. Innovation continues, but without aggression. Progress continues, but without extraction. Art continues, but without performance. Science continues, but without domination. People act because the movement arises, not because they are trying to become someone through the action. The centre remains while the world turns. Work becomes precise, relationships become simple, speech becomes clean. There is no urgency to prove, display, accumulate, or defend. What is done is what is needed. What is not needed falls away. In such a world, intelligence is not something owned or produced — it is something met. And creation becomes the natural unfolding of life, grounded in the stillness that has always been here.
The centre remains while the world turns.
Creation from stillness is the only creation that is whole.
What is it when I think it is all done, but the truth still needs to shine through? It says there is more when you are ready. It speaks to you via stillness in mind.
In stillness, the intelligence is really speaking to the self to show it how limited it is.
