What Is the Aggregate of Form?

Form (rūpa) is the aggregate of form, one of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha). It has appearance, shape, and color, and includes visible form (rūpa), shape (saṃsthāna), expressive gesture (vijñapti), and non-expressive form (avijñapti-rūpa); the latter three constitute the material form included among mental sense-objects (dharma-viṣaya). Visible form is blue, yellow, red, and white; shape is large, small, square, round, long, short, wide, and narrow; expressive gesture is the shape and posture of form, the movements and actions of the body, walking, coming, going, stopping, and so forth; non-expressive form is the beauty, ugliness, charm, appeal, temperament, learning, cultivation, calmness, anger, cheerfulness, warmth, and so forth manifested in the appearance of form. The material form included among mental sense-objects is the mental sense-object (dharma-viṣaya) manifested upon form, sound, smell, taste, and touch; it corresponds to the manas and is discerned by the mind consciousness. Form also includes the form of sentient beings, male and female physical appearances, the universe with its mountains, rivers, and great earth, plants and minerals, houses, palaces, and other insentient objects.

The Diamond Sutra says: "若以色见我，以音声求我，是人行邪道，不能见如来。" This means that if one wishes to see the Tathāgata, to see the Dharmakāya Buddha (dharma-kāya-buddha), to see the true Buddha, one must not seek Him through marks of form or sound; that which has form, sound, and the marks of the six sense-objects is not the true Buddha—it is the Sambhogakāya Buddha (saṃbhoga-kāya-buddha), the Nirmāṇakāya Buddha (nirmāṇa-kāya-buddha), or the manifested body, adorned with the thirty-two major marks and eighty minor marks; this is a manifested Buddha subject to arising and ceasing. Māra Pāpīyas, by the power of his merit, can also manifest the appearance of a Buddha. After the Buddha entered parinirvāṇa, the Fourth Patriarch Upagupta had Pāpīyas manifest the physical appearance of Śākyamuni Buddha so that he could behold and gaze upon it. Pāpīyas indeed manifested the Buddha's form, walking out from the forest followed by a group of disciples. At first sight, Upagupta took him to be the true Śākyamuni Buddha and could not help but bow in worship; unable to bear the worship, Pāpīyas revealed his original form. Therefore, to see the Tathāgata one must not cling to the marks of form, and must not seek to see Him through the marks of form.