Shimmering With Intelligence

It’s sometimes difficult to find a way to make Buddhist ideas feel like they really touch our felt experience. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about this because I want to write briefly about one description of reality that is found in non-dual teachings – it’s called the ‘ground’. You can read about this all over the place and it’s always described as three indivisible qualities that are – and then blah, blah comes the explanation. While I have no problem with this, it’s difficult to cross the gap between the ideas and what this means for us and by extension, our meditation practice. And this is important, because at the end of the day our practice is all about getting real and the good things that then follow. So today I had a little insight that might just help …

The ground - refers to the nature of reality, how things really are once we can experience everything without blinkers. (Please don’t turn off immediately). It’s said to have three qualities: it’s ‘empty’, aware and it’s energy is without limit. Now, while sitting this morning it suddenly occurred to me that when I hear this it always sounds as if it’s about something that doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s about Buddhist stuff elsewhere. However today was different - if this is true then it must be true whether I, and indeed the whole planet earth, exists or not. It’s also saying something about the entire universe which is absolutely extraordinary and very, very beautiful. That everything is energy which endlessly manifests as an infinitude of interconnected fleeting appearances and that this energy and its dreamlike forms are all awareness. And then comes to really amazing part - this energy throws up certain appearances - creatures that can become aware or awareness - and through them knows itself. So, when we sit, in those moments of resting in awareness, it is the energy that displays as the universe consciously knowing itself.

I’ve tried to capture some of the mystery of this in a previous blog where I explored the image of the sea and its waves. If we feel we are a wave then we look out and see other waves who appear to be quite separate from ourselves, but if we explore our watery nature, what becomes apparent is that we are part of the sea, as are all the other waves. Our separateness is an illusion, everything is of one nature. However, while this metaphor captures the truth of the grounds energy as the sea and its appearances as the waves, what it does not quite encompass is its awareness. To do this we would have to say that the sea is not one great seething mass of change but is more like – changing the metaphor – a field of luminous self-knowing. It’s bright with a brilliant clarity.

And you know what, all this with perhaps the absence of the presence of awareness, is exactly what modern quantum mechanics says about the universe. It’s not a universe of separate objects, but a single field of energy, endlessly and momentarily becoming particles, waves, appearances — and, strangest of all, a field that seems to behave differently the moment it’s known.

NW. 20 August 2026

PS. If you would like to know more about the Ground you can find out about it and a great deal more in Dzogchen, Who's Who and What's What in the Great Perfection – a handbook compiled by me. Available via Amazon.