Vap Full Moon Poya Day falls on Wednesday:

Impermanence: the Buddhist view of life

By Lionel Wijesiri

Most of us think the impermanence of all things is an unpleasant fact we’d rather ignore. We look at the world around us, and most of it seems solid and fixed. We tend to stay in places we find comfortable and safe, and we don’t want them to change. We also think we are permanent, the same person continuing from birth to death, and maybe beyond that.

In other words, we may know, intellectually, that things are impermanent, but we don’t perceive things that way. And that’s a problem.

Trilalakshana

Buddha teaches us that there are the three characteristics (trilalakshana) of all that is conditioned, i.e., dependently arisen. These three basic facts of all existence are:

Impermanence (anicca)
Suffering (dukkha)
Not-self (anatta).

The first and the third apply to non-living beings existence as well, while the second (suffering) is, of course, only an experience of the living beings. The non-living beings, however, can be, and very often is, a cause of suffering for living beings: for instance, a landslide may cause injury, death to living beings.

It may also cause loss of property and, as a result, mental pain to living beings. In that sense, the three are common to all that is conditioned, even to what is below or beyond the normal range of human perception.

Existence can be understood only if these three basic facts are grasped, and not only logically, but in confrontation with one’s own experience. Insight-wisdom (vipassana) which is the ultimate enlightening factor in Buddhism, consists just of this experience of the three characteristics applied to one’s own bodily and mental processes, and deepened and matured in meditation.

Process

The Buddha teaches that the cosmic process goes through four stages of development.

(a) It emerges from a state of undifferentiated matter.
(b) It evolves to a point of maximum differentiation.
(c) It begins to disintegrate.
(d) Then it reaches a stage of total disintegration, destruction.

Then after sometime, the process repeats itself. In this way every world system arises, evolves and passes away. In history we find the same pattern. A civilisation arises, reaches its zenith, declines and eventually perishes.

In life, we are born and grow up, when growth reaches the maximum it is followed by ageing decay and death. Nothing in life is absolutely reliable. Fortune changes, character and relationships evolve and dissolve. That is the coarse feature of impermanence.

The subtle mark of impermanence is more difficult to grasp. The Buddha points out that there are no static entities, but only dynamic processes which appear to us to be stable and static only because our perception is not sharp enough to detect the changes. Things themselves are constantly undergoing changes just as a waterfall is always changing but from a distance it seems solid, because we can’t perceive the flow.

The Buddha taught that when we die we are reborn in a new form but he doesn’t want us to see this as an essential or self, moving from one vehicle (the body) to another. In one Buddhist scripture, it is described in the following way:

What happens from life to life is a constant evolving for better or worse, (depending on our actions). Just as we are not the same person as an adult that we were as a child, so we change from life to life, the quality of our circumstances determined by our previous actions.

Within each personality there is ability to make decisions which are like a rudder directing the course of our lives. The decisions we make can be good or bad, but we have that freedom.

The impermanence of life becomes self-evident to those who are mindful of their inner and outer worlds. Through the practice of mindfulness meditation they arrive at the definitive conclusion that suffering is inevitable for those who are caught in the dualities of attraction and aversion to transient phenomena.

Buddhism therefore prescribes mindfulness practice to overcome the negative influence of impermanence.

Mindfulness

In this regard, out of the two methods of mindfulness meditation prescribed by the Buddha, vipassana meditation is considered the best. Vipassana meditation is an awareness meditation. It teaches us to be aware of everything that comes to us and is happening to us.

Only the present moment is important. And everything that comes to us at the present moment through the six sense doors is to be noted, to be watched, to be observed as the object of awareness.

When we practise Vipassana meditation, by making mental notes or just watching the various things that come to us, we will bring awareness to a high level so that we will be able to see things as they truly are. We will come to see the true nature of mind and body. “True nature” means the nature of impermanence, the nature of dukka, and the nature of anatta.

It is important to see these three characteristics of nature so that we can have a correct view of things, and may have less attachment to mind and body. Gradually we will be able to weaken the hold of mental defilements that prevent enlightenment.

We may see the three stages of existence: arising, staying for a time and then disappearing. They are known as the three sub-moments of one thought moment. When we see a state of mind arise, stay for a very short time, and then disappear, we know that this is impermanent.

This knowing or seeing that something is impermanent, must come from our own experience. It must not come from a book, it must not come from a teacher. It must come from within ourselves. So we must not be satisfied with what we read in books or hear in talks. We must see for ourselves.

In Vipassana meditation, which is also called insightful meditation, we gain insight into the nature of our existence as we pay mindful attention to the impermanence that is inherent in the various aspects of our own personality, namely, our breathing, feelings and sensations, consciousness and the sense-objects or the phenomena. As we become aware of how they appear and disappear like the waves in an ocean, we develop “clear seeing” and tranquil awareness (jhana).

Real life

The ignorance on our mind stream blots out impermanence, and we have a lot of grasping to things being permanent. Of course intellectually we say, “Yes! Yes! Everybody dies and my antiques break and the car breaks…” We say it all intellectually but that is just intellectual.

We just can’t accept it when it happens. That shows that there is a big difference between intellectually knowing something and actually integrating it in our lives so that it becomes our way of relating to the world. It’s showing that intellectually knowing something doesn’t do the trick of solving our problems. We have to put it in our heart.

Impermanence is the nature of our existence. We cannot fight with it or escape from it as long as we are caught in the cycle of births and deaths. We cannot remove impermanence from existence, but we can gain an insight into working and learn to deal with it by controlling our emotions and attitudes, until we reach a stage where it is no more troublesome for us.