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Chapter 5 - The state of being is called stability. Just as the living element never abandons the general form of the father and the special form of consciousness, this is its eternality, and without abandoning the said form, it does not attain the form of the non-living element; this is its stability. The essence is that not abandoning the form of the father and not attaining the form of the outsider are both parts of the same nature in all substances; the first part is called eternality and the second part is called stability. The statement of the eternality of substances indicates the permanence of the world, and the statement of stability indicates that they do not undergo mutual mixing—though all substances are mutable, they remain anchored in the nature of their essence and, despite coexisting, they remain unaffected by one another's characteristics. Thus, this world is eternal since the beginning, and the number of its fundamental elements remains the same.
Question: Considering that the non-living, like the dharmastikaya, is also a substance and a principle, should it not then necessarily have some form? How then can it be called formless?
Answer: Here, formlessness does not imply the negation of form; substance indeed has a dharmastikaya-like form. And what has no form at all is not established as a thing akin to the horned hare. Here, the statement of formlessness negates form, meaning that in this context, form refers to substance. Form refers to the result of the nearness of the substance, or it refers to the community of color, taste, smell, and touch.