Nyanaponika Thera:
<!-- robots content="none" --><!-- #H_meta --><!--
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a minute sector of life's vast range, we are faced with a variety
of living forms so tremendous that it defies all description. Yet
three basic features can be discerned as common to everything that
has animate existence, from the microbe to man, from the simplest
sensations to the thoughts of a creative genius:
impermanence or change (anicca);
suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha);
non-self or insubstantiality (anatta).
These three basic facts were first found and formulated over
2,500 years ago by the Buddha, who was rightly called "the Knower
of the World" (loka-vidu). They are designated, in Buddhist
terminology, the three characteristics (ti-lakkhana) — the
invariable marks or signs of everything that springs into being,
the "signata" stamped upon the very face of life itself.
Of the three, the first and third apply directly to inanimate
existence as well as to the animate, for every concrete entity by
its very nature undergoes change and is devoid of substance. The
second feature, suffering, is of course only an experience of the
animate. But the Buddha applies the characteristic of suffering to
all conditioned things, in the sense that, for living beings,
everything conditioned is a potential cause of experienced
suffering and is at any rate incapable of giving lasting
satisfaction. Thus the three are truly universal marks pertaining
even to what is below or beyond our normal range of
perception.
The Buddha teaches that life can be correctly understood only
if these basic facts are understood. And this understanding must
take place, not only logically, but in confrontation with one's own
experience. Insight-wisdom, which is the ultimate liberating factor
in Buddhism, consists in just this experiential understanding of
the three characteristics as applied to one's own bodily and mental
processes, and deepened and matured in meditation.
To see things as they really are means to see them consistently
in the light of the three characteristics. Not to see them in this
way, or to deceive oneself about their reality and range of
application, is the defining mark of ignorance, and ignorance is by
itself a potent cause of suffering, knitting the net in which man
is caught — the net of false hopes, of unrealistic and harmful
desires, of delusive ideologies and of perverted values and
aims.
Ignoring or distorting the three basic facts ultimately leads
only to frustration, disappointment and despair. But if we learn to
see through deceptive appearances, and discern the three
characteristics, this will yield immense benefits, both in our
daily life and in our spiritual striving.
On the mundane level, the clear comprehension of impermanence,
suffering and non-self will bring us a saner outlook on life. It
will free us from unrealistic expectations, bestow a courageous
acceptance of suffering and failure, and protect us against the
lure of deluded assumptions and beliefs. In our quest for the
supramundane, comprehension of the three characteristics will be
indispensable. The meditative experience of all phenomena as
inseparable from the three marks will loosen, and finally cut, the
bonds binding us to an existence falsely imagined to be lasting,
pleasurable and substantive. With growing clarity, all things
internal and external will be seen in their true nature: as
constantly changing, as bound up with suffering and as
unsubstantial, without an eternal soul or abiding essence. By
seeing thus, detachment will grow, bringing greater freedom from
egoistic clinging and culminating in Nibbana, mind's final
liberation from suffering. <!-- / message -->