The Three Marks of Existence
Filed Under Buddhadharma | Posted on June 7, 2007
The previous post made reference to the Three Marks of Existence. Here’s a more complete explication.
The Three Marks are first defined in verses 277 - 279 of the Dhammapada:
277. “All conditioned things are impermanent” [anicca]– when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification.
278. “All conditioned things are unsatisfactory” [dukkha] — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification.
279. “All things are not-self” [anatta] — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification.
The Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines is an excellent general resource and as good a place as any to explore these terms further:
anicca: ‘impermanent’ (or, as abstract noun, aniccatá, ‘impermanence’) is the first of the three characteristics of existence. It is from the fact of impermanence that, in most texts, the other two characteristics, suffering (dukkha) and not-self (anattá), are derived.
Impermanence of things is the rising, passing and changing of things, or the disappearance of things that have become or arisen. The meaning is that these things never persist in the same way, but that they are vanishing dissolving from moment to moment.Impermanence is a basic feature of all conditioned phenomena, be they material or mental, coarse or subtle, one’s own or external: All formations are impermanent.
Without the deep insight into the impermanence and insubstantiality of all phenomena of existence there is no attainment of deliverance.
dukkha: (1) ‘pain’, painful feeling, which may be bodily and mental. (2) ‘Suffering’, ‘ill’.As the first of the Four Noble Truths and the second of the three characteristics of existence, the term dukkha is not limited to painful experience as under (1), but refers to the unsatisfactory nature and the general insecurity of all conditioned phenomena which, on account of their impermanence, are all liable to suffering, and this includes also pleasurable experience. Hence “unsatisfactoriness” or “liability to suffering” would be more adequate renderings, if not for stylistic reasons. Hence the first truth does not deny the existence of pleasurable experience, as is sometimes wrongly assumed.
“Seeking satisfaction in the world, monks, I had pursued my way. That satisfaction in the world I found. In so far as satisfaction existed in the world, I have well perceived it by wisdom. Seeking for misery in the world, monks, I had pursued my way. That misery in the world I found. In so far as misery existed in the world, I have well perceived it by wisdom. Seeking for the escape from the world, monks, I had pursued my way. That escape from the world I found. In so far as an escape from the world existed, I have well perceived it by wisdom” (A. 111, 101).
anattá: ‘not-self’, non-ego, egolessness, impersonality, is the last of the three characteristics of existence.The anattá doctrine teaches that neither within the bodily and mental phenomena of existence, nor outside of them, can be found anything that in the ultimate sense could be regarded as a self-existing real ego-entity, soul or any other abiding substance. This is the central doctrine of Buddhism, without understanding which a real knowledge of Buddhism is altogether impossible. It is the only really specific Buddhist doctrine, with which the entire Structure of the Buddhist teaching stands or falls [emphasis added]. All the remaining Buddhist doctrines may, more or less, be found in other philosophic systems and religions, but the anattá-doctrine has been clearly and unreservedly taught only by the Buddha, wherefore the Buddha is known as the anattá-vádi, or “Teacher of Impersonality”. Whosoever has not penetrated this impersonality of all existence, and does not comprehend that in reality there exists only this continually self-consuming process of arising and passing bodily and mental phenomena, and that there is no separate ego-entity within or without this process, he will not be able to understand Buddhism, i.e. the teaching of the 4 Noble Truths, in the right light. He will think that it is his ego, his personality, that experiences suffering, his personality that performs good and evil actions and will be reborn according to these actions, his personality that will enter into Nibbána, his personality that walks on the Eightfold Path. Thus it is said in Vis.M. XVI:
“Mere suffering exists, no sufferer is found;
The deeds are, but no doer of the deeds is there;
Nibbána is, but not the man that enters it;
The path is, but no traveler on it is seen.”While in the case of the first two characteristics it is stated that all formations are impermanent and subject to suffering, the corresponding text for the third characteristic states that “all things are not-self”. This is for emphasizing that the false view of an abiding self or substance is neither applicable to any ‘formation’ or conditioned phenomenon, nor to Nibbána, the Unconditioned Element.
The Anattá-lakkhana Sutta, the ‘Discourse on the Characteristic of Not-self’, was the second discourse after Enlightenment, preached by the Buddha to his first five disciples, who after hearing it attained to perfect Holiness.
With the addition of the single statement, “Nirvana is true peace,” the Three Marks of Existence become the Four Seals of Buddhism or Dharma:
1. All Composite Things are Impermanent
2. Everything Defiled Is Suffering
3. All phenomena are empty and without inherent entity
4. Nirvana is peace
Acceptance of the Four Seals is the foundation for the acceptance of Buddhism. Conversely, according to Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, failure to accept the Four Seals makes you “not a Buddhist”:
If you cannot accept that all compounded or fabricated things are impermanent, if you believe that there is some essential substance or concept that is permanent, then you are not a Buddhist.
If you cannot accept that all emotions are pain, if you believe that actually some emotions are purely pleasurable, then you are not a Buddhist.
If you cannot accept that all phenomena are illusory and empty, if you believe that certain things do exist inherently, then you are not a Buddhist.
And if you think that enlightenment exists within the spheres of time, space, and power, then you are not a Buddhist.
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