Making a measuring stick out of formlessness, part one

Is wind more formless than water or rock?

Is a blank sheet of paper more formless than a canvas with art on it?

Is the beautiful little blissful bindu you feel in your deepest meditation more formless than your loudest sneeze on a crowded subway?

Is any perception, no matter how subtle you imagine it to be, ultimately any more formless than a perception filled with bold color and feeling?

Relatively speaking, the concept of formless only makes sense contextually. Something can be said to lack form only in relation to something else that has particular qualities conceived of as representing form within that context. For example, improvisational dance might be said to lack form. But this only makes sense in relation to other forms of dance and only within a context where, perhaps, structured rules of dance is being used as a definition of form. In reality, improvisational dance is full of form. It has as much form as any other style of dance or anything for that matter, its forms are merely invented spontaneously as opposed to being derived from previously designed choreography.

Gradients of form and the relative absence of form can be conceptualized, but, again, the absence of form only makes sense contextually. An empty pocket does not have emptiness in it. It just lacks materials we expect to find there, ie: coins, wallet. An empty vase is not filled with nothingness. It’s filled with air, a very real substance in a gaseous state. It’s this less solid quality, relative to the material of the vase, which encourages us to say there is nothing in the vase. There is a conception here of solid as representing form. The vase is the solid, so it’s the form, air is gaseous, so it’s formless; it’s nothing. And deeper still, how often is it useful to discuss the air in a vase? How often do we succeed in focusing our eyes on air in a vase? These are also conceptions of form; that which is useful and capable of being distinguished. Oddly enough, perhaps it’s for these very reasons that air, or more accurately, the space within a container, is frequently used as a metaphor pointing to an insight of formlessness. Formlessness is not useful in any kind of conventional sense. Formlessness is impossible to separate and focus on, since anything we can differentiate and focus on is, by definition, form. So air makes a great metaphor. But air is not literally more formless than anything else. True formlessness, like emptiness, infinity, enlightenment, Tao and God are beyond, while still including, what our mind’s can conceive and grasp.

Yet how often are we under this misconception that we can somehow conceptually grasp formlessness and put it to work as a means of classification? How often do we classify the forms of spiritual traditions and their practices into a hierarchy of sophistication based on an imagined measure of so-called formlessness? Really, I am asking - how often do we do this, am I just speaking for my own silliness here? :)

Is sitting in the posture of zazen more formless than dancing?

Are spiritual traditions that directly discuss an idea of formlessness as a concept more formless than spiritual traditions that do not?

Are experiences from spiritual practices that explicitly attempt to experience formlessness actually more formless than spiritual experiences richer with imagery and meaning?

Is Zen Buddhism more formless than Christianity?

Is a stark room with no furniture, just a zafu and an austere monk closer to formlessness than a room filled with furniture, toys and a family playing?