Tag: form and formless

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form

moe Leave a comment

This fits my direct experience.

To me, it’s as if the world is a dream. It happens within and as consciousness. It happens within and as the consciousness I am.

Just like a dream is without substance and solidity, the world to me seems without substance and solidity. It’s empty of substance and solidity.

Similarly, I find that what I am allows any content of experience. I am fundamentally empty of being anything, which allows the experience of everything.

Said another way:

The consciousness I am is empty. It’s fundamentally empty of form which means it can take on any and all forms. And it’s empty in the way night dreams are empty, without inherent substance.

And the consciousness I am is form, in that it takes on the forms of experience that’s here.

The quote “form is emptiness and emptiness is form” is a direct reflection of what I notice.

WHAT I MORE FUNDAMENTALLY AM

At one level, I am a human being in the world. That’s not wrong and it’s an assumption that works pretty well.

And in my own first-person experience, I find that I more fundamentally am something else.

I find I am capacity for the world. I am capacity for anything within my field of experience.

I am what the world, to me, happens within and as.

This also matches what I find logically.

If I “have” consciousness, it means that I have to BE consciousness. And if I have an experience it has to happen within consciousness. To me, the world happens within and as the consciousness I am.

Waking life, night dreams, and any state and experience happens within and as the consciousness I am.

FORM IS EMPTINESS, EMPTINESS IS FORM

Here, the statement reflects a direct and immediate noticing.

As consciousness, I am empty. I am inherently empty of anything. I am free to allow any and all experiences to come and go. It’s my nature. It’s inevitable.

As consciousness, I am also what forms itself into any and all experience. The consciousness I am forms itself into my experience of the world, as it appears here and now.

As consciousness, I am capacity (emptiness) and I am the field of experience (form) as it is here and now.

So form is emptiness. And emptiness is form.

HOW IT CAN APPEAR IF WE IDENTIFY AS AN OBJECT

This is how it always and already is.

So why does it sometimes appear differently?

When the oneness we are takes itself as (most fundamentally) an object in the world, then it seems that we are an object in a world full of objects.

And from here, the statement – form is emptiness and emptiness is form – doesn’t make much sense.

It seems abstract. Philosophical. Puzzling. A paradox. Nonsensical.

And when the oneness we are notices itself, the statement is just a direct reporting of what we notice.

WAYS OF GETTING IT

The oneness we are can “get” this in different ways.

We can see it. We can get it more viscerally.

Our metaphorical “center of gravity” can be mostly in separation consciousness or shift into oneness. (This is what we viscerally take ourselves to be.)

We can get it more or less thoroughly. We may get it in a general and “global” way, and we can also get it when it comes to specific states and content of experience, and especially that which our personality habitually doesn’t like.

MY EXPERIENCE

In my mid-teens, there was a oneness shift that happened “out of the blue” and this (form=emptiness) was something I directly noticed. I had no familiarity with Buddhism or spirituality in general, so when I tried to write about it in my journal, I used different words.

All, without exception, is God. Even a sense of being this human self is God, locally and temporarily, creating that experience for itself.

All is God, all is God’s consciousness. All is consciousness.

And if I had known about the empty/form language, I would perhaps have written:

Consciousness is inherently empty, and this emptiness allows it to take any and all forms.

And all the forms of consciousness, all experiences and the whole world, is inherently empty.

It’s all form and emptiness, just like a night dream.

It took several years before I found anyone who seemed to have had the same shift that turned everything upside-down and inside-out. The first time was reading a book of sermons by Meister Eckhart at the main library in Oslo.

Some while after that, in my late teens or early twenties, I got into Buddhism and heard this elegant reporting of direct noticing: form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

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Freedom through form

moe Leave a comment

When I look at freedom through form, I find that it happens in many different ways.

Existence finds freedom to explore itself through taking on various forms. Or more accurately, when I notice what I am (that which content of experience happens within and as), I find that this content of experience is the play of what I am. It is how it explores and experiences itself as and through form. Always new. Fresh. Different. Said yet another way, it is how the infinite can experience itself as finite, or at least an appearance of it which is as good as it gets.

In a growing/waking up context, I also find that there is freedom through form. There is an invitation to grow and wake up within the world of form, a freedom to grow and wake up through the friction of form. For instance, I hold onto a story as true (fixed perspective/role), the rest of the world of form doesn’t agree, there is friction (stress), which in turn invites me to notice and inquire into my belief. Or more immediately, I may notice resistance, allow that resistance and anything else happening, and notice it all as awakeness itself.

In a practice context, there is also freedom through form. I go to retreat, and the form creates a container for practice. I don’t have to think about what to do next, and – again – the friction between the form and my beliefs creates opportunities to grow and wake up. The same is the case for yoga, tai chi, chi gong and other practices that has a set form. There is also a freedom from having the personality run the show here, at least in those few areas. And the form itself may be designed to work on me in specific ways, so I give it that freedom to work on me when I follow the form.

There is also freedom through form in a social context, especially in the forms of roles. For instance, since I am married I don’t have to consider (very seriously) if someone else can be a potential partner. I have the freedom to spend my attention somewhere else.

The first one, the freedom of existence to explore itself as form, just happens. The second, the invitation to grow and wake up through the friction of form, requires some participation. The third and fourth are obviously more optional, and require more of a discernment and conscious decision on our part. Which forms do I chose to follow? What are the practical outcomes of following them?
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Layers of identity

moe Leave a comment

Our layers of identity goes all the way down, revealing nothingness, just like the layers of an onion.

The outermost layers are the lightly held preferences, the ones we are typically not much identified with, such as which sweater to wear today, which flavor ice cream, which movie to watch, and so on. There is an identity around these things, but it is not so tightly held. It is our superficial preferences about things not that important.

The roles we play in our life are a little more real and important to us, although there is usually some fluidity here: child, father, mother, husband, wife, lover, teacher, student, profession, and so on. It is possible to be strongly identified with some of these roles, but they are most of the time relatively fluid. We feel at home in several of them, and can shift among them as our situation changes.

We also have preferences that seem more real and more important than the flavor of our ice cream, such as ethics, norms, value systems, all our shoulds about people’s relations.

And our psychological identities, such as feminine or masculine, strong or weak, healthy or sick, outgoing or introvert, active or passive, and so on.

There are the identities we are born into, such as our culture, ethnic group, sometimes religion.

We are also (most often) born into our biological roles, such as sex and (visible) genetic ethnicity.

And then the identities that goes along with being a biological organism, such as mammal, human, wanting to avoid pain, wanting shelter, food and water, seeking safety and procreation, and so on. The basic survival identifications and preferences.

There are also many others, such as a sense of belonging… to a species, family, subculture, culture, bioregion, nation, continent, Earth, universe.

And then the core one: an identification with a sense of a separate self, of an I that has an Other.

More or less identification with the identities

Each of these are identities, the biological and psychosocial ones, the small scale ones and the larger scale ones. And there is more or less identification with each of these identities at any one point in time.

Exploring identities

As we start exploring these, for instance through a form of self-inquiry, we may see that the ones that were tightly held, that seemed so real, so beyond anything that could be questioned, even those are just identities.

They can be identified with to a greater or lesser extent, and when they are more lightly held, it tends to give a sense of more freedom. More possibilities open up. We don’t box ourselves in so much when they are more loosely held, when we release some of our identification with them.

A sudden shift (and convincing demonstration)

I remember one of my first mediation retreats where the pain in my legs grew more and more intense (and I stubbornly refused to get a chair.) At one point, the pain grew so unbearable that a sudden shift happened…

The pain was still there, as much as before, but there was no identification with that pain anymore. It just happened in space as anything else, and there was no identification with is so also no resistance to it. It happened in space, just as the clouds moving through the sky or the sounds of the cars swooshing by the center.

It was a dramatic demonstration of the struggle and drama that is experienced when we closely identify with something (I was this body trying to push away this pain) to the sense of ease and clarity when there is a disidentification with is (the pain and this body just arising in space as anything else.)

Even the identities that seem most real are just identities

It was also a demonstration of how even the identities that seems most real, most beyond anything that can be questioned, are also just identities that we can be more or less closely identified with.

Even my biological identities, or wanting (needing!) this and that, is an identity. Even the core sense of a separate self is an identity. And they can be more or less tightly held, more or less identified with, taken as real, substantial, as defining who or what I really am.

What we really are

As we continue to explore this, we may find ourselves as what is without any center or separate self. Just what is, the seeing and the seen here and now, as a field, inherently centerless and selfless.

Not bound by any fixed identities, any beliefs, any mind-made boxes defining who or what we really are. Just this field, arising as it does right now, inherently free from any identifications, and also beyond and embracing them all. Inherently free from, so allowing, any identities to arise.

No identity, allowing the fluidity of any identities

We are this field of seeing and seen, of awake emptiness and form, centerless and selfless, functionally connected with a particular individual human self. Our real identity is no identity, allowing any identity to come and go, fluidly, as it does anyway.

All the usual identities of our individual self is still there, all our preferences and the way our passport define us, but they are not taken as what we really are. They are identities used for purely functional and practical reason, for getting around and operating in the world, but they are not identified with.

We can say that in our deep, there is no identity. And this absence of identity allows any identity to arise, and it allows a fluidity of identities to come and go.

There is no core identity anymore telling us what other identities to allow or not. Nothing is excluded. Nothing is walled off. There is just the fluidity of what arises. And this is what always has been, we just didn’t see it when we were busy holding onto certain identities and fighting off other identities.

It is the freedom of the ocean which is formless in its depth, and manifests as form (waves) on its surface. From the formlessness of the depth, any form is allowed on the surface.

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