Our continuous unconscious fear about our mortality creates unhappiness for all beings, ourselves & others. The Pāli anicca is usually translated as “impermanence.” Along with anattā, not-self, & dukkha, suffering or unsatisfactoriness, it is one of three characteristics of human experience. A trained mind can see this, at first during meditation, later in everyday experience. The arising of anicca makes not-self (anattā), another of the “three characteristics” of experience (ti-lakkhaṇa), understandable. Impermanence creates dukkha, “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness,” since our sense of self is what we use to manage our fear of death. To alleviate dukkha, we must train the mind to see in each moment of experience that there is impermanence, that what we take to be solid is the arising & passing of many interacting forces. Seeing clearly, we note fear is simply something that arises & passes.
The understanding of anicca deepens through training, & seeing it in experience. It works hand in hand with seeing anattā, not self, since the impermanent nature of all that arises in experience confirms the idea we are asked to accept: Everything changes, without ceasing. How could there be any kind of unchanging solid self? The world does not “happen to us;” we are aspects of the world, eddies within the larger currents of arising & passing away.
anatta • anicca • dukkha • terror management • three characteristics