← All Fetters Fetter VII

Attachment to Formlessness

Arūpa-rāga

Clinging to emptiness, spaciousness, and pure awareness.

What Is Attachment to Formlessness?

The seventh fetter is attachment to formless realms — the craving for states beyond form, such as infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, or pure awareness itself.

This is an even more subtle attachment than the previous fetter. The practitioner may have let go of attachment to refined states but now clings to:

  • The experience of formlessness
  • Vast spaciousness
  • Emptiness and nothingness
  • Pure being or pure awareness
  • "Resting as awareness"

This can feel like the end of the path. But notice: there is still a subtle someone who has found something.

The Subtlest Trap

"I Am Awareness"

There is a subtle identification with awareness itself. The thought arises: "I have found it — I am pure awareness."

But look carefully:

  • Who is it that "is" awareness?
  • Who has "found" something?
  • Is this not still a subtle self — now identified with the formless instead of form?

The movement from identifying with form to identifying with formlessness can feel like liberation. "I am not the body. I am not thoughts. I am awareness." It's subtler than gross identification, but the mechanism is the same.

There is still a holder onto the experience of spaciousness. A preference for "resting as awareness" over ordinary experience.

Awareness as Object

Here's the crucial insight: even awareness itself can become an object of attachment.

When you "rest as awareness," is there not something that is aware of resting as awareness? Can you catch that?

The formless jhānas (infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither perception nor non-perception) are profound experiences. But experiences they remain — temporary, conditioned, objects of consciousness.

If there is any preference for the formless over the form, any sense that "emptiness is more true than appearance," there is still attachment.

How to Look

Exercise: Looking at Awareness

  1. Notice awareness. The sense of being aware.
  2. Now notice: something is noticing awareness. What is that?
  3. Can you find where awareness ends and experience begins? Is there actually a boundary?
  4. Is "pure awareness" different from this ordinary moment right now?
  5. What would remain if all notions of awareness dropped away?

The point isn't to have no experience of spaciousness or awareness. It's to see that even these are not something to hold onto.

After This Fetter Falls

When this fetter is seen through, even the subtle attachment to awareness, emptiness, or formlessness dissolves.

There is no preference for any type of experience over another:

  • Form and formlessness are equal
  • Ordinary and extraordinary are the same
  • Busy mind and still mind — just this

What remains cannot be described as "awareness knowing objects." It's not two things. Just this — seamless, undivided, not holding onto anything, not pushing anything away.

"Not awareness knowing objects, but just this — seamless, undivided."

Contemplation

Is there a subtle attachment to awareness itself? A preference for being in "pure awareness" rather than in ordinary thinking?

Notice if there is any holding onto formlessness, spaciousness, or emptiness as something special or more true than form.

What is aware of awareness?

Can awareness itself be another object of attachment?

Ready to Look?

The Fetters app guides you through examining even the subtlest attachments — including the attachment to the pathless path itself.

Download the App