Buddhist practice seeks to unify the awareness/expression of form and formlessness-the unification of awareness of the fluid, open, ultimately unidentifiable suchness of phenomena along with and through its form. Neither getting stuck in form or formlessness is seen as ideal in this religion. "Forms" of practice and ritual are oriented to fostering this awareness. Christianity has the tradition of "kenosis," seeing Christian practice as an emptying out or "hollowing" of oneself to grow in unity with God. Makes me wonder if all religious practice may be about achieving balance between form and formlessness. What do you think about this equation and its balance in various religions/religion as a whole? Take care, Earl
form and formlessness in religions
- Thread starter earl
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_Z_
from far far away
Earl hi,
I wondered at first if it was possible to not be of either one or the other! I presume by ‘formlessness’ they mean random change or continual transformation of forms e.g. as with being continually re-incarnated?
So are we after stillness or non-change, and this is like silence of being i.e. peace. Therefore eternity is not desirable? I agree in a way, as I always end up there when I think of it all, but then I consider all the people I know and love, how can we experience this warmth when all there is is nothingness? I quite like the idea of arriving at nirvana then proceeding with peace in the heart to somewhere where there is love and warmth – and being able to return to nirvana at will, kinda utilising it like sleep. But I feel that once there then we may not return, and perhaps we wouldn’t want to as it perhaps can be seen as ‘the place of all hearts’!
A very fundamental question you pose there! Very interesting too.
Z
I wondered at first if it was possible to not be of either one or the other! I presume by ‘formlessness’ they mean random change or continual transformation of forms e.g. as with being continually re-incarnated?
So are we after stillness or non-change, and this is like silence of being i.e. peace. Therefore eternity is not desirable? I agree in a way, as I always end up there when I think of it all, but then I consider all the people I know and love, how can we experience this warmth when all there is is nothingness? I quite like the idea of arriving at nirvana then proceeding with peace in the heart to somewhere where there is love and warmth – and being able to return to nirvana at will, kinda utilising it like sleep. But I feel that once there then we may not return, and perhaps we wouldn’t want to as it perhaps can be seen as ‘the place of all hearts’!
A very fundamental question you pose there! Very interesting too.
Z
Hi Z. Thank you for your thoughts. Whether "random" or not, certainly formlessness does include the notion of change-impermanence-one of the 3 marks of existence noted by the Buddha. All phenomena are always in flux, but we tend to either passively or actively avoid awareness of that and attempt to fix the form in place, to find a concrete middle ground that can be clearly defined-nice firm dimensions that are eternally the same at all times and in all places, when perhaps that "middle ground" is to use the western scholar of Buddhism, Herbert Geunther's phrase, the "openness" dimension. If Christian kenosis is about setting aside fixation on anything that is "not God" and "God" is beyond human definition and conceptualization, what then? Perhaps that is Christianity's koan.
Life-death, loss-gain, pain-pleasure; all dualities fall to either side of the Great Middle. Perhaps all it takes to remain on a spiritual path of heart and wisdom is to say "don't know" and "thank you." Oh but what a trick that is!
If this thread remains as a"koan" to stimulate further contributions, I would be most grateful. Take care, earl
Life-death, loss-gain, pain-pleasure; all dualities fall to either side of the Great Middle. Perhaps all it takes to remain on a spiritual path of heart and wisdom is to say "don't know" and "thank you." Oh but what a trick that is!
If this thread remains as a"koan" to stimulate further contributions, I would be most grateful. Take care, earl
It all reminds me of Pauls 'I die daily', the old self, the old ideas, the old traditions die to allow the new to grow and manifest. You can't put new wine in old wineskins...if we are married to the past we don't allow the future in, if we cannot let go of our thoughts of duality and seperateness, we leave no room for thoughts of oneness or nonduality...to exist.
_Z_
from far far away
Earl, hi
Isn’t oneness with god a kinda heretic notion - perhaps even blasphemous! Or have I got Christianity all muddled up. Heaven is then the ‘place’ that we all go – as I alluded to before as concerns loved ones, general human feelings and higher desires? Then we are like how gods children ‘should be’ [?] and god would be ever present.
Wil, hi
Duality and separateness! This is where I get confused with the notion of god – I mean; can we say that the only reality is god? Then the path is to lead us towards this goal, or as in the pre-history belief of going back to the ‘original self’ or primordial nature. For me these things make everything seam so pointless as if nothing matters in the end!
When I look into the night sky, it is hard to imagine the ultimate nature as self or god – more something that can be such things yet is so much more vast [expansive - universal].
Oneness and plurality are for me defunct expressions/meanings [or secondary], except as allusions to higher philosophical ideas. I have been searching for a way to break the paradox of these + reality and illusion – I prefer infinity and the quantum, both are real, yet infinity is oneness in that one cannot build up to it – its just kinda there, then the quantum is ‘not quite finite’!
It’s all in the beginnings of explanations – if we start right then we may proceed in ‘truth’.
I am probably wrong though!
Z
Isn’t oneness with god a kinda heretic notion - perhaps even blasphemous! Or have I got Christianity all muddled up.
Heaven is then the ‘place’ that we all go – as I alluded to before as concerns loved ones, general human feelings and higher desires? Then we are like how gods children ‘should be’ [?] and god would be ever present. Wil, hi
Duality and separateness! This is where I get confused with the notion of god – I mean; can we say that the only reality is god? Then the path is to lead us towards this goal, or as in the pre-history belief of going back to the ‘original self’ or primordial nature. For me these things make everything seam so pointless as if nothing matters in the end!
When I look into the night sky, it is hard to imagine the ultimate nature as self or god – more something that can be such things yet is so much more vast [expansive - universal].
Oneness and plurality are for me defunct expressions/meanings [or secondary], except as allusions to higher philosophical ideas. I have been searching for a way to break the paradox of these + reality and illusion – I prefer infinity and the quantum, both are real, yet infinity is oneness in that one cannot build up to it – its just kinda there, then the quantum is ‘not quite finite’!
It’s all in the beginnings of explanations – if we start right then we may proceed in ‘truth’.
I am probably wrong though!
Z
From the concepts of Ominpotence, Omniscience and Omnipresence...there is no choice we are all part and parcel of God. All that is is God...in him we live and breath and have our being....
What if nothing does matter? We worry about life and death yet kill every day for sustanance, kill germs for health, kill microbes when we gargle...we have no issues stepping on ants or our waste from our bodies or houses or cars polluting our world....well some isssues....but we get over it.
What if this is just a video game...and nothing matters, wipe out this body and get another play? Does that mean you'll start raping and pillaging tomorrow? Does that mean you'll lie to get out of a traffic ticket...or quit lying?
What is it that is holding together yourself to keep straight, is it laws, is it religion....do you need either to do the right thing...but we think others do?? How hypocritical is that??
so what?
What if nothing does matter? We worry about life and death yet kill every day for sustanance, kill germs for health, kill microbes when we gargle...we have no issues stepping on ants or our waste from our bodies or houses or cars polluting our world....well some isssues....but we get over it.
What if this is just a video game...and nothing matters, wipe out this body and get another play? Does that mean you'll start raping and pillaging tomorrow? Does that mean you'll lie to get out of a traffic ticket...or quit lying?
What is it that is holding together yourself to keep straight, is it laws, is it religion....do you need either to do the right thing...but we think others do?? How hypocritical is that??
Well, Z, my underastanding of all theistic theologies-well at least Chrisitanity_Z_ said:Earl, hi
Isn’t oneness with god a kinda heretic notion - perhaps even blasphemous! Or have I got Christianity all muddled up.
Wil, hi
Duality and separateness! This is where I get confused with the notion of god – I mean; can we say that the only reality is god? Then the path is to lead us towards this goal, or as in the pre-history belief of going back to the ‘original self’ or primordial nature. For me these things make everything seam so pointless as if nothing matters in the end!
When I look into the night sky, it is hard to imagine the ultimate nature as self or god – more something that can be such things yet is so much more vast [expansive - universal].
Oneness and plurality are for me defunct expressions/meanings [or secondary], except as allusions to higher philosophical ideas. I have been searching for a way to break the paradox of these + reality and illusion – I prefer infinity and the quantum, both are real, yet infinity is oneness in that one cannot build up to it – its just kinda there, then the quantum is ‘not quite finite’!
It’s all in the beginnings of explanations – if we start right then we may proceed in ‘truth’.
I am probably wrong though!
Z
-is they posit unity or very close "relationship" between an individual and God as opposed to "oneness" per se, though at ultimate relationship where's the dualism or oneness I guess. One of the best quotes I ever encountered from a Christian mystic that addresses the formlessness within the form within Christian theology came from Meister Eckhart. I'll borrow that quote agin here from a thread I started regarding him some 8 months ago ("Zen of Meister Eckhart"):"When I subsisted in the ground, in the bottom, in the river and fount of Godhead, no one asked me where I was going or what I was doing; there was no one to ask me. When I was flowing, all creatures spake God. If I am asked, Brother Eckhart, when went ye out of your house? Then I must have been in. Even so do all creature speak God. And why do they not speak Godhead? Everything in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be said. Godhead does no work, there is nothing to do, in it is no activity. It never envisaged any work. God and Godhead are as different as active and inactive. On my return to God, where I am formless, my breaking through will be far nobler than my emanation. I alone take all creatures out of their sense into my mind and make them one in me. When I go back into the ground, into the depths, into the well-spring of Godhead, no one will ask me whence I came or whither I went. No one missed me: God passes away."
In the sen tradition one has not made the "complete trip of enlightenment" until one clambers down off the mountain view of formlessness into the enlightened functioning of form; returning to the market with bliss-bestowing hands. Don't know how Eckhart lived post-insights, but certainly Mother Theresa's work with the most "untouchables" of India while speaking of meeting "Jesus in all his distressing guises" sounds an awful lot like that re-entry phase
Have a good one, earl
_Z_
from far far away
Sounds like he had a little trip into the void.
Is formlessness so bad! And nothingness a ‘higher attainment’? or is the understanding of the entirety the goal? Do we learn only to throw it all away? Perhaps once one has become one with the void as the centre, then the heart is still and we are delivered! [formless ness surrounds but does not engulf] I guess we never know until we are there!
Z
Is formlessness so bad! And nothingness a ‘higher attainment’? or is the understanding of the entirety the goal? Do we learn only to throw it all away? Perhaps once one has become one with the void as the centre, then the heart is still and we are delivered! [formless ness surrounds but does not engulf] I guess we never know until we are there!
Z
Become one with formless and form no longer affects?
I am in this world but not of it?
Living so that all you see is good and unity in whatever surrounds you?
Sounds like Mother Theresa thought to me....
_Z_
from far far away
Hi wil
Hmm like a nucleus with the world orbiting, rather than being an orbital perhaps! [That’s a state of mind/spirit thing]. Not one with formlessness if the heart is one with the divine centre. I doubt if it is possible on this level – I would presume we would need a more subtle body – but perhaps there is a way. This would not be as ‘high’ as nirvana of course, yet we could walk in paradise with our loved ones with peace in our hearts – at least this as intermediary, maybe heaven is an intermediary realm?
Not in this world! But I feel that if one can balance the heart, then you will generate peace and fate will pass you by, as it likes to act on adversity.
Animals react differently too – but I wouldn’t test this theory with a lion!
Z
Hmm like a nucleus with the world orbiting, rather than being an orbital perhaps! [That’s a state of mind/spirit thing]. Not one with formlessness if the heart is one with the divine centre. I doubt if it is possible on this level – I would presume we would need a more subtle body – but perhaps there is a way. This would not be as ‘high’ as nirvana of course, yet we could walk in paradise with our loved ones with peace in our hearts – at least this as intermediary, maybe heaven is an intermediary realm?
Not in this world! But I feel that if one can balance the heart, then you will generate peace and fate will pass you by, as it likes to act on adversity.
Animals react differently too – but I wouldn’t test this theory with a lion!
Z
I'd say it's not about "grasping heaven" and "rejecting Earth" or adhering to formlessness over form but seeing the Reality of both together. For instance some stanzas from the Heart Sutra of Buddhism:
"The Bodhisattva of Compassion
sitting in the deepest wisdom
saw the hollowness of things
and snapped the ties
that bound him to suffering.
Sariputra form and formlessness are not two
but one thing
feeling and thought, awareness and will
are formless.
All the ways of occurrence
are formless.
They are not made or broken
they do not rise or fall
they are not good or bad."
When the two can be one while remaining two, we will be living out some of that Great Mystery. Take care guys, Earl
"The Bodhisattva of Compassion
sitting in the deepest wisdom
saw the hollowness of things
and snapped the ties
that bound him to suffering.
Sariputra form and formlessness are not two
but one thing
feeling and thought, awareness and will
are formless.
All the ways of occurrence
are formless.
They are not made or broken
they do not rise or fall
they are not good or bad."
When the two can be one while remaining two, we will be living out some of that Great Mystery. Take care guys, Earl