The 3 Characteristics

The Buddha had a talent for teaching things in a simple and methodical way, and one of the best examples of this is the concept of the 3 characteristics or marks of existence. Like all of Buddha’s teachings, they form a complete teaching in themselves if understood deeply and correctly. This is one of the most powerful teachings ever written in my opinion and cuts right down to it – don’t be fooled by its simplicity.

The 3 characteristics are (bracketed words are the original Pali):

  1. Impermanence (anicca)
  2. Suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha)
  3. No-self (anatta)

Anicca means that no thing is permanent. Everything that is created can and eventually will be destroyed. All that is born will die. This is the central teaching upon which the other 2 characteristics are based.

Dukkha means that no object of the senses or mind can give lasting happiness or fulfilment, i.e., all objects are ultimately unsatisfactory and clinging to them gives rise to suffering (as per the 2nd noble truth).

Anatta is more difficult to understand than the other two, but is probably the most essential one to understand. Like dukkha, anatta is a natural extrapolation of anicca. It can be interpreted in various ways, but essentially it says there is no separate individual self or person. What we take to be the separate self is actually a constantly changing composite of other things which are themselves composites that change. Thought comes along and imagines an individual self or person who makes decisions and performs various activities, but this person is illusory.

The other aspect of anatta is that objects themselves are all also devoid of any intrinsic existence – i.e., they are subject to change. This is also known as the teaching of emptiness (sunyata).

One way of looking at the teachings is that we see that everything changes (anicca). After sometime chasing happiness through objects (physical or mental) we realised no lasting satisfaction in outward things (dukkha). This leads to a calm a pure mind (called sattva in Hinduism and Vedanta). When the mind is calm and no longer ruffled up trying to seek pleasures in objects, it is able to see subtle things that is was previously unable to see, and so pierce the veil of ‘ignorance’ (misunderstanding). When the sattvic mind looks at itself, it sees that it never existed as an individual at all (anatta).

This is nirvana, in which the individual self has been extinguished (nirvana literally means blown out, like when a candle flame is blown out). More accurately it could be said that the self was seen to never have existed – the illusion is seen through and seen for what it is – unreal, imaginary.

Life is seen to happen spontaneously to nobody. Life becomes a delight, to nobody. This is freedom, the freedom that was always there but simply was not seen.