The goal of Gotama’s teachings is reached by training to know our experience unfolding in the moment. Suffering & stress (dukkha) result when mental activity creates friction with the world (the way things are); our experience becomes that painful friction. To see this, we must train the mind to observe this process. One way to do this is by experiment: give up something desired, or tolerate something not liked, & watch the mind react. This practice is renunciation (nekkhamma)1, whether meditating for minutes, or practicing at a meditation retreat for days, weeks, or months. For monastics, it is a way of life. In this laboratory of experience, we can observe how pleasant or unpleasant sensations (vedanā) arise & pass away. We can see how much the mind is ruled by habits, by reactions to these sensations; the clockwork of our hedonic cycle is seen for what it is. Thoughts assemble themselves as reactions to experience. Three characteristics of experience appear with clarity: impermanence (anicca: mental events quickly arise & pass), not-self (anattā: events in the mind aren’t “who we are”), & stress & suffering (dukkha) constantly arises.
anatta • anicca • dukkha • hedonic • practice • sīla • three characteristics • vedana
- Strictly speaking, renunciation is a practice, rather than a topic for study. But it offers a good example of how study & practice are two sides of a coin: practicing renunciation, we see directly the characteristics of impermanence, not-self, & suffering. As we see this more clearly, our study of other topics becomes easier. ↩