Form is Form

Windows were shakin’

All night in my dream

Everything was exactly

The way that it seemed.

– Bob Dylan, “Highlands”

Question: The other day I was reading Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind … in it Suzuki-roshi says: (I’ll condense it & paraphrase) form is emptiness and emptiness is form…. Then further down he says…”fortunately” our teaching goes on to say form is form and emptiness is emptiness: Here there is no dualism.

Most people talk about form is emptiness…emptiness is form…but, I have never heard anyone say: Good thing our teaching goes on to form is form and emptiness is emptiness.

Why does he go on to say it in that way? It makes me think, some Zen commentaries are leaving off some important point.

Response: Suzuki-roshi is probably referring to Dogen’s “Great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom,” a fascicle of the Shobogenzo. I don’t know if “form is form” is only found in Dogen Zen. I peeked into some of my Indian and Tibetan commentaries and didn’t find it there (well, except the Trungpa quote below which might be from his hanging out with Suzuki … or not).

In any case, it’s cut-the-bull teaching – a willingness to be whatever. Dylan models this above in “Highlands” – depression, old-guy yearning, and an uneasy peace, contradictory though that might seem. It’s Heart-Sutra-beyond-Heart-Sutra.

Here’s Chogyam Trungpa from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, utterly one of the best contemporary dharma books:

“Finally we come to the conclusion that form is just form and emptiness is just emptiness, which has been described in the sutra as seeing that form is no other than emptiness, emptiness is no other than form; they are indivisible. We see that looking for beauty or philosophical meaning to life is merely a way of justifying ourselves, saying that things are not so bad as we think.

“Things are as bad as we think!

“Form is form, emptiness is emptiness, things are just what they are and we do not have to try to see them in the light of some sort of profundity.

“Finally we come down to earth we see things as they are. This does not mean having an inspired mystical vision with archangels, cherubs and sweet music playing. But things are seen as they are, in their own qualities. So shunyata (emptiness) in this case is the complete absence of concepts or filters of any kind, the absence even of the “form is empty” and the “emptiness is form” conceptualization. It is a question of seeing the world in a direct way without desiring ‘higher’ consciousness or significance or profundity. It is just directly perceiving things literally, as they are in their own right.” 

This is returning to the market place after a long search with empty, bliss-bestowing hands.