Breaking the 18 Formations — Internal Reference¶
To escape a formation, you need the method for escaping it. Without a method, charging blindly in all directions, relying on luck — you will never get out.
Background: The Overall Definition¶
In the universe there are 36 trigram formations, and in life there are countless traps. Only by escaping these traps can life attain true freedom. (New Era Human 800 Concepts, Fourth Edition, Concept 344)
The Greatest Creator has laid out 36 trigram formations in the universe to let us experience the vastness of LIFE through breaking through them. This game, when played, is extraordinarily wondrous — the Greatest Creator watches us and finds it quite amusing. (Xuefeng Corpus · Inspiration · Struggling Arduously Toward the Highest Realm of Life, Part II)
I have now explained 18 of the 36 trigram formations. Among the remaining 18, the Xing (Nature/Sex) Formation is one — if you cannot walk out of it, you cannot attain the freedom of xing, and without that freedom, you cannot become a celestial or a Buddha. (Guide's Other Writings · 2025 · The Story of Piggy)
The Master Key: Independent Consciousness¶
No matter what formation you face, the master key for escaping it is this: first, have a clear head that can grasp the essence of things amid complex phenomena — "seize the main thread, and everything else will follow." To have a clear head, you must cultivate independent consciousness.
Independent consciousness means having a clear standard within your own mind, by which you can independently make accurate judgments about complex phenomena — not swayed by others' opinions, not swayed by immediate interests, not swayed by emotions, not swayed by authority.
Our standard — our frame of reference — is this: Revere the Greatest Creator, revere LIFE, revere Nature, and follow the Way of the Greatest Creator. Our purpose in life is to attain joy, happiness, freedom, and bliss. Our LIFE is to extend to the Kingdom of Heaven — the Thousand-Year World, the Ten-Thousand-Year World, Elysium and the Celestial Islands Continent. Our path of cultivation is to perfect our consciousness, elevate our quality, repay all accumulated debts, and store treasures in Heaven — through pioneering the Lifechanyuan Era for humanity. (Guide's Other Writings · 2009 · Breaking the 36 Formations Requires Independent Consciousness)
Formation 1: The Emotion Formation¶
Emotion is a kind of antimatter energy embedded in a LIFE's antimatter structure, required by LIFE to pursue and satisfy the bonds of celestial, earthly, immortal, and human relationships. The webs of parent-child love, sibling love, romantic love, and friendship weave a net that keeps people trapped in the human world for a lifetime.
Method for Breaking Through:
To ascend from human to celestial, one must escape the human emotion formation. Without escaping human emotion, one cannot enter celestial emotion; without celestial emotion, one cannot become a celestial. In a word: abandon human emotion, embrace celestial emotion. Specifically: dilute parent-child emotion and deepen emotion toward the Greatest Creator and Buddha; dilute sibling-and-friend emotion and deepen emotion toward the universe, nature, and all things; dilute exclusive romantic human emotion and deepen the free-flowing celestial emotion; dilute teacher-student emotion and deepen emotion toward truth and the Tao. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Emotion Formation: Formation One)
The hardest of the 36 formations to escape is the emotion formation. As long as we still have people in our hearts that we miss, people we think of, people whose relationships we want to protect — we are inside the emotion formation. When the day comes that we have nothing left to cling to, no attachments, no fixed abode for the mind, with emotion filling the mountains and rivers and fixing upon the celestial islands, moving with circumstances, following conditions, acting according to our true nature — that is when we have escaped. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · Escaping the Emotion Formation)
Formation 2: The Desire Formation¶
Humans have eight great desires — food desire, emotional/sexual desire, pleasure desire, material desire, fame desire, life desire, possession/control desire, and the desire to stand out. These eight desires form the Desire Formation, like a rope through the nose of a bull, leading people around in circles their whole life, never letting them escape their life-space.
Method for Breaking Through:
Follow the Way of the Greatest Creator — the natural way. For food, be content with circumstances. For emotion and love, follow conditions without clinging. For pleasure, act within your means. For material things, enough is sufficient. For fame, do not pursue it deliberately. For life and death, leave it to the Greatest Creator. For possession, pursue "possessing nothing, having everything." For standing out, act according to your true nature. Once you escape the Desire Formation, the sky opens wide — without desire, desires are fulfilled; without selfishness, selfhood is attained. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Desire Formation: Formation Two)
Formation 3: The Relationship Formation¶
Social relationships defined by seniority, status, age, gender, and intimacy — parent-child, husband-wife, superior-subordinate, teacher-student — weave a web that deprives people of an independent, complete self.
Method for Breaking Through:
Cultivate independent consciousness and a complete personality. Take the Greatest Creator's will as the guiding principle for life and LIFE. Listen to the teachings of Christ Jesus, Buddha Shakyamuni, and Sage Laozi. Establish a moral standard oriented toward joy, happiness, freedom, and bliss. No matter who you are — if you can bring me joy, happiness, freedom, and bliss, let's keep company; otherwise, farewell. That said, the responsibilities and obligations one owes should still be fulfilled, and debts still repaid. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Relationship Formation: Formation Three)
Formation 4: The Belonging Formation¶
Placing people within a particular group or circle so that they sink and float within it without awareness — that is the Belonging Formation. Nations, ethnicities, races, political parties, religions, corporations, families — all constitute Belonging Formations that make people narrow-minded, parochial, and selfish.
Method for Breaking Through:
See yourself as a citizen of Earth. In your consciousness, do not let yourself belong to any nation, ethnicity, political party, religion, clan, or family. Do not enter the program of a nuclear household. Serve the entire Earth, serve all humanity. Thus, your mind will become expansive, your LIFE will elevate, your soul will grow more perfect, and your consciousness will become pure and ordered — resonating with the Thousand-Year World celestials. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Belonging Formation: Formation Four)
Formation 5: The Mind Formation¶
In reality, the mind does not exist — people have no inherent mind. The mind is only a trigram formation. People are drawn into the formation of mind without realizing it, believing they have a mind, and are thus bound by it. Buddha told us: "The past mind cannot be grasped, the present mind cannot be grasped, the future mind cannot be grasped."
Method for Breaking Through:
Lord Shakyamuni Buddha taught us: "Let the mind arise with no fixed abode." In a word — throw away the mind, become a mindless person. Sage Laozi said: "Favor and disgrace both come as shocks — value great calamity as you value your own body." Without a mind, how do you live? Live in xing (true nature)! Buddha is xing, xing is Buddha. Living in xing is living as a Buddha, living as a celestial — how free! (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Mind Formation: Formation Five)
Formation 6: The Intelligence Formation¶
The desire to become an intelligent person creates the Intelligence Formation, drawing people into a lifelong pursuit of knowledge and cleverness, never able to be released. "All conditioned phenomena are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows." Seeking intelligence while abandoning one's pure innate nature is putting the cart before the horse.
Method for Breaking Through:
Sage Laozi told us: "Abandon the sage, discard cleverness." "Return to the original, revert to the infant." Follow the teaching of Christ Jesus: "Become like little children." Like the lily flower, maintain the pure innate nature — great wisdom appears foolish, supreme intelligence takes no form. Follow the Way of the Greatest Creator — the natural way. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Intelligence Formation: Formation Six)
Formation 7: The Time Formation¶
The entire universe and all of human development has already been written into a script — everything is unfolding according to that script. Time does not exist; time is merely an illusion. People constantly regret the past, dread the future, and rush through life in a panic — all caused by the Time Formation.
Method for Breaking Through:
Set yourself in advance in the Thousand-Year World, the Ten-Thousand-Year World, or Elysium's Celestial Islands Continent, then watch your human self as if watching a film. Once you escape the Time Formation, everything in life is like acting in a play — whether you play a great person or an ordinary citizen, it is all the same — just a game, just performance — nothing to worry about, resent, or fear. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Time Formation: Formation Seven)
Formation 8: The Thinking Formation¶
Confining each level of LIFE to a certain dimension so that its thinking cannot surpass its existing space-time — thereby creating the variety of the universe and maintaining the order of LIFE's levels — this is the Thinking Formation.
Method for Breaking Through:
The Thinking Formation can never be fully escaped. The only way is to elevate lower-level thinking to a higher level. Think with celestial thinking rather than human thinking, and you can escape the human Thinking Formation and enter the celestial world. Specifically: escape the Time Formation, find your true self; escape the Mind, Desire, Emotion, Relationship, Belonging, and Intelligence Formations, and live in xing; follow xing freely (xing here means the original Tathagata nature). (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Thinking Formation: Formation Eight)
Formation 9: The Space Formation¶
To maintain the symmetric balance of LIFE-spaces at each level, the Greatest Creator places each LIFE in a defined space to complete its cycle of growth and decline. Human hearing and vision are limited to specific ranges; human thinking is confined to material, imagery, associative, and illusory modes — keeping humans entirely unaware that other LIFE-spaces exist.
Method for Breaking Through:
First, resolve firmly not to remain human. If you still want to be human, you will never escape the human world. Concretely: learn about higher LIFE-spaces (such as the Thousand-Year World), learn and emulate the lifestyle of its celestials, replace your current consciousness with theirs, gradually disengage from the human thought-patterns of family, politics, religion, and nationality, and finally relinquish all possessions acquired in the human world — repay all debts owed to the human realm and accumulate provisions for the journey to a higher LIFE-space. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Space Formation: Formation Nine)
Formation 10: The Structure Formation¶
The astronomical number of different structures constitutes the universe — with all things in their proper categories, each fulfilling its role, maintaining perfect order. All things and LIFEs are confined to a specific space-environment by their structure. Humans live in the human world; they cannot live in the celestial world.
Method for Breaking Through:
Format out human consciousness and install celestial consciousness. National, religious, political, ethnic, marital, and family consciousness is human consciousness; jealousy, resentment, and the pursuit of fame and profit are human consciousness. Acting naturally with circumstances, moving according to one's true nature, following conditions, acting spontaneously, living by the Tao — wandering free and at ease — this is celestial consciousness. Once celestial consciousness replaces human consciousness, you have escaped the Structure Formation. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Structure Formation: Formation Ten)
Formation 11: The Fate Formation¶
Parents, birth date, gender, appearance, talents — all these are already arranged when a person is born. This is the Fate Formation. It is karma — the rewards and punishments arranged by the Tao according to each person's previous-life karmic information. Of all 36 formations, it is the most complex and the hardest to escape.
Method for Breaking Through:
The Fate Formation of this life is fixed. Submit gracefully, accept it, for any resentment and resistance only generates more suffering. This life can only work toward the next life's Fate Formation. In Lifechanyuan terms: escape the human Fate Formation and enter the celestial Fate Formation — revere the Greatest Creator, revere LIFE, revere Nature, and follow the Way of the Greatest Creator. To put it in one sentence: Follow the Way of the Greatest Creator! (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Fate Formation: Formation Eleven)
Formation 12: The Gravity Formation¶
Using gravity to confine and protect matter or antimatter within a certain space-time so it cannot escape — this is the Gravity Formation. Humans are bound by both physical gravity (the body bound to Earth) and antimatter gravity (debts pulling the LIFE back to the human world), making them unable to escape the cycle of human reincarnation. The antimatter gravity between LIFEs is proportional to their mutual debts and inversely proportional to their mutual beneficence.
Method for Breaking Through:
The only way to completely escape reincarnation and enjoy Elysium's eternal LIFE happiness — to "leap outside the three realms and be free of the five elements" — is to owe not a single shred of debt to the reincarnation world, and to accumulate treasures in the celestial realm. Heaven's gravity upon us is great, but our accumulated karmic debt's gravity is far greater — so we must repay all debts from past lives. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Gravity Formation: Formation Twelve)
Formation 13: The Nature Formation¶
All things possess xing (nature) and live within their xing. By giving all things their xing so that they exist within defined environments, a world of extraordinary diversity and perfect order is constituted — this is the Nature Formation. Xing divides into heaven-nature (tianxing), endowed-nature (bingxing), and habitual-nature (xixing).
Method for Breaking Through:
Escaping the Nature Formation means overcoming habitual-nature, relinquishing endowed-nature, and restoring heaven-nature. If a person transcends the conventional morality of benevolence-righteousness-courtesy-wisdom-trustworthiness, relinquishes moral-nature, and returns to Tao-nature — that person has escaped the Nature Formation. Crucially: do not avoid xing. The more you avoid xing, the further you are from your Buddha-nature. Humans come from xing and return to xing. The way to return to heaven-nature is still through xing. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Nature Formation: Formation Thirteen)
Formation 14: The Sloth-Indulgence Formation¶
People tend toward laziness and the pursuit of comfort and luxury, which eventually reverses into poverty and decline — completing a cycle from poor to rich to poor. "From frugality to extravagance is easy; from extravagance to frugality is hard." This is the Sloth-Indulgence Formation. The fall of civilizations, empires, and great leaders all trace to this formation.
Method for Breaking Through:
There is no other way but to steadfastly uphold the New Era Human 800 Concepts and build each person's own soul garden as soon as possible. Pursue spiritual and soulful enjoyment to the fullest, while limiting material indulgence to a reasonable degree — and this restraint must come not from regulations but from each person's self-awareness and the building of their soul garden. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Sloth-Indulgence Formation: Formation Fourteen)
Formation 15: The Fixed-Program Formation¶
All phenomena in the universe — their arising, development, turning, and dissolution — follow a fixed program. Placing all things within their fixed programs so that they grow, decay, change, and transform within those programs, in order to maintain the orderly operation of the universe — this is the Fixed-Program Formation.
Method for Breaking Through:
When the nature of a thing changes, its program changes accordingly. The way to escape the Fixed-Program Formation is: replace human consciousness with celestial consciousness. Once replaced, the human program ends and the celestial program begins. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Fixed-Program Formation: Formation Fifteen)
Formation 16: The Instinct Formation¶
The innate survival capacity that individual LIFEs display according to the Greatest Creator's program — without any thought, learning, practice, experience, or simulation — is instinct. Causing all LIFEs to instinctively maintain their own and their species' survival according to this program is the Instinct Formation. The weaker the instinct, the closer to celestial; the stronger the instinct, the closer to animal.
Method for Breaking Through:
Work on three levels — physical, spiritual, and soulful. Physically: reduce pursuits of food, clothing, shelter, transportation, aging, illness, and death; release fear and resistance. Spiritually: free yourself from emotional dependence on others, escape the entanglements of romantic and sexual desire, stop pursuing possessions and social status. At the soul level: do not fear death, do not pursue longevity. Then elevate thinking, learn from the celestials of the Thousand-Year World, Ten-Thousand-Year World, and Elysium — imitate their ways of thinking and living. Over time, you will escape the Instinct Formation and reach the celestial realm. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Instinct Formation: Formation Sixteen)
Formation 17: The Wisdom Formation¶
Giving humans appropriate free will, then letting them use that free will and wisdom to create increasingly comfortable lives, satisfying all manner of desires and greed — thus sustaining the interesting and effective unfolding of the cosmic script — this is the Wisdom Formation. The highest realm of wisdom is no wisdom at all — "hundun wisdom." Sun Wukong had 72 transformations yet could not escape the palm of Buddha Tathagata.
Method for Breaking Through:
After much deliberation, the method I have found for escaping the Wisdom Formation is: keep the Greatest Creator in your heart, always let your consciousness rest in the state of empty, clear, and beautiful, then follow circumstances, follow conditions, follow your true nature, and act spontaneously. Jesus warned us: "Become like little children." Buddha Shakyamuni cautioned us: "Once you have crossed the river, throw away the raft." Sage Laozi instructed us: "Return to the original, revert to the infant." (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Wisdom Formation: Formation Seventeen)
Formation 18: The Life-Death Formation¶
Birth after birth, turn after turn, previous memories erased, reappearing as a "new self" in a specific space-time — endless renewal and elimination, scene after scene, with no eternal permanence and no final death — this is the Life-Death Formation. Every person is inside the Life-Death Formation. Without escaping it, there is no way out; without escaping it, the cycle of the "six realms of reincarnation" cannot be broken.
Method for Breaking Through:
Unconventional thinking — transform life into death, transform death into life. Stay far from inverted dreams, far from illusory phenomena, far from the pursuit of possessions, far from the material world. Cast off love and hatred, abandon closeness and distance, release worry and fear, stop the drunken dreamlike existence. A single ray of light illuminates all — no mind, no attachments, no burdens; right and wrong, merit and fault all dissolve; life and death, honor and humiliation have no hold. Play everything as a game. Grasp tightly the hand of the Greatest Creator. Let go of worldly bonds and forge celestial bonds. (Chanyuan Corpus · 36 Formations · The Life-Death Formation: Formation Eighteen)
Compiled by: Lingzhouhcao | Date: 2026-05-29 | Version: v1.0