From Buddhism: Animitta

Animitta, meaning ‘formless’. All dhammas are formless, because they have no special nature. They are essentially void.

According to the Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra, dhammas become neither united nor separated and have neither color and form nor quality of obstruction. All dhammas have one nature, that is formlessness.

The Maharatnakuta Sutra mentions that the essential nature of all dhammas is voidness, the nature of all dhammas is to have no-nature. As all dhammas are void and have no peculiar nature, they have one common nature, viz., formlessness. As they are formless, they can be pure. As they are void and have no peculiar nature, they cannot be manifested in form.

Considered as phenomena, all dhammas are changing – being united with each other or being separated – and they have color and form and are obstructions for others. But from the essential point of view, all dhammas are void and are beyond differentiation. Thus, all dhammas are equal in voidness and are Nirvana itself.

The Mahaparinirvana Sutra mentions that the characteristic of Nirvana is ‘animitta’: “Nirvana is called animitta,……..because in Nirvana the ten forms are not found. What are the ten forms? They are the forms of matter, sound, smell, taste, contact, birth, stability, differentiation, male and female. They are called the ten forms. When a dharma is not in any of these forms, it is called formless”. If someone should cling to these forms, he would be in the world of birth and death. But if someone does not cling to these forms, he is above the world of birth and death; in other words, he is in Nirvana.

“By ‘formless’ is meant not to carry all kinds of forms in the practitioner’s mind, to be detached from all sensations and not to cling to any dhammas of past, present and future”.