animitta

"without a mysterious cause"

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impermanence

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

middle way

Gotama’s teaching of the middle way is an analysis of human experience that avoids both absolutes (“everything exists,” or “something exists forever”) & nihilism, or the despair that there is no meaning to life (“nothing exists”). “Dependent arising1” is key: the idea that our experience—phenomena, events, things & our mental reactions—comes about through the never-ending collisions of many processes, none of which exists separately, as a thing, self-existing. This is something that can be observed, with training, in each mental experience. Specifically the arising of dukkha , suffering & stress, can be observed, & with training, cut off. Dependent arising is a detailed, twelve-step analysis2 of the psychology of human experience. Seeing this process, we can identify the weak link where dukkha, suffering, can be cut off: craving, (taṅhā, the eighth of the twelve steps), which is key to Gotama’s teachings. (This key also appears in the well-known teaching of the four ennobling truths.) It is at this point in our mental process that habits, whether helpful or unhelpful, are either reinforced or weakened.

anatta • dependent arising • dukkha • free will • kamma • views

  1. Pāli. paṭiccasamupāda, also translated as “dependent origination,” “co-dependent arising,” etc. ↩
  2. See, for example, the Kaccānagotta Sutta, Saṃyutta Nikāya ii.16-17 ↩

nature of person

Seeing the nature of person—what we are, rather than who we are—is one of the foundational insights produced by training in Gotama’s teachings. By training the awareness & developing mindfulness (habitual, continuous focusing of awareness), we can see the impermanent (anicca) and not-self  aspects of what we are. Using Gotama’s other categories for analysis, such as the five aggregates & the six sense bases, we can see the mental processes of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, & thoughts as they arise. We can see repeating patterns of these mind events, perceptions, sensations of liking & disliking—all soaring & swooping together like a flock of birds, a constant murmuration of the mind. This symphony of insights has the power to relieve our enchantment with the delusion of a solid, separate self, to see, in real time, that this delusion is the root cause of dukkha: dissatisfaction, stress, & suffering, including the fear of death. The psychological assumption of a separate, solid self (something more than patterns, habits, & conditions), is called “self view” (sakayadiṭṭhi) in Gotama’s teachings; leaving that behind for good is a major mark of progress toward complete liberation.

anatta • anicca • dukkha • not self

nibbāna

In Gotama’s teachings, nibbāna is the permanent equanimous disenchantment with the anxieties & fears created by our untrained way of experiencing the world. The understanding with which we are typically born is the result of a blind, unknowing process of evolution, which has no concern for our feelings. Our “anxieties & fears” include both “good” experiences going away, & fear of “bad” experiences that could happen at any time. Nibbāna is the absence of dukkha, the stress & suffering of the untrained mind trapped in the human existential problem—a mortal being that knows it is mortal, & also believes itself to have a separate, essential self at the core. Believing in the existence of this essential self & the fear of death chase each other like a dog after its tail. The obvious impermanence of everything—especially of living beings—constantly reinforces the cycle of illusion & fear. The illusion has been conditioned by evolution because that increases the likelihood of survival & reproduction, & thus the continued existence of a particular pattern (of DNA). Although we have evolution to thank for our existence, it is merely a random process without the ability to care for us as individuals. Escaping the psychological effects of this problem is the goal of Gotama’s teachings:

pubbe cāhaṃ bhikkhave etarahi ca

dukkhañceva paññapemi dukkhassa ca nirodhaṃ

“All that I teach is dukkha & the ceasing of dukkha.”

dukkha

not self

To alleviate dukkha, we must train the mind to see, in each moment of experience, that what we take to be a self is a flow of many mental events, arising, interacting, & passing. What seems like a solid self is more like a flock of birds, individual mental events maintaining position with each other, buffeted by the winds of external events, memories, & habits. Our tendency to grasp at this flock & cling to it for solace is the cause of suffering & dissatisfaction. The energy for this anxious, endless flight is our unconscious fear about our mortality, which creates unhappiness for all beings—ourselves & others. The Pāli anattā means “not self” literally. Along with anicca, “impermanence,” & dukkha, “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness,” it is one of the “three characteristics of human experience” in Gotama’s teachings. All of Gotama’s teachings, ultimately, are designed to train us to observe the effects of these three realities of human experience. We observe that our experience—clearly & closely seen in meditation—equals constant change, & that there is nothing solid, nothing in experience that can be seen as a self to which experience occurs: the arising experience is, in fact, what we take for self. Self is the name we give to how we explain our experience. But since it constantly falls apart, it provides no lasting solace, nothing but continuous dissatisfaction, hidden even in moments of pleasure. This is dukkha, suffering & stress.

anicca • dukkha • three characteristics

person of Buddha

Gotama explicitly says he is not a god.1 Those who know about him only through some later Buddhist traditions can be forgiven for finding this surprising, since some cultures show him being worshipped like a god, & some later doctrines have him living in a heaven. But the being described in the earliest texts makes no demand that anyone believe him to be supernatural (nor does he argue against the existence of gods). Why is this important? Gotama’s goal is to relieve the stress & suffering of the human condition (dukkha). Clinging to anything, including metaphysical ideas like a godhead (or an atheism that denies gods), will cause suffering in the long run, because we hope this idea of power & benevolence will shield us from our fear of death. Having been born human, Gotama tells us, he escaped the world of conditioned (& fearful) human experience by doing away with all clinging: to sensual pleasure, to becoming, & to ignorance (of the true nature of what we are). Through mental training, mindfulness, & perseverance, the clinging of human delusion (avijjā, ignorance) & the dukkha of being human can be left behind.

anatta • culture • dukkha • language • sacred

  1. Dona Sutta, AN 4.36 ↩