Generally, it is just the problem stated in the terms of dependent arising. Any item preceding the following is sankhara, and so the following item is sankhata dhamma. Being impermanent, determined (sankhata) and dependently arisen are synonyms terms, just like knowledgeable about impermanence always go together with. the knowledge about dukkha and anatta.
I would rather say that one who approaches impermanence without taking into account assumed permanence of the subject or person - sakkaya, put oneself into impossible position where understanding of the Dhamma simply cannot happen.
Nibbana in Suttas is described as the cessation of conceit “I am” what allows as to state the Four Noble Truths in the following way:
1 conceit “I am” = dukkha
2 conceit “I am” is dependently arisen
3 there is such thing as cessation of the conceit “I am”
4 there is the way leading to the cessation of conceit “I am”
Refusing to deal with reality, namely that conceit “I am” and it rationalisation on the level of views, sakkayadithi, where certain self-image of what I am is created are associated with perception of permanence, one simlpy refuses to deal with the reality of dukkha, and instead of following the Buddha’s advice: suffering is to be understood, one in fact not only doesn’t understand dukkha, which after all is a normal puthujjana’s situation, but it looks like one doesn’t want to understsnd it.
Of course that Dhamma is very difficult to understand, and also it is true that puthujjana does not understand his own experience and so he doesn’t see the fundamental existential contradiction between the permanence of one’s own self, and impermanence of sankharas - things from which conceit “I am” is derivated.
So Lord Buddha says:
“There is, bhikkhus, a world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through. Having done so, he explains it, teaches it, proclaims it, establishes it, discloses it, analyses it, elucidates it.
“And what is that world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through? Form, bhikkhus, is a world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through. Having done so, he explains it, teaches it, proclaims it, establishes it, discloses it, analyses it, elucidates it. When it is being thus explained… and elucidated by the Tathāgata, if anyone does not know and see, how can I do anything with that foolish worldling, blind and sightless, who does not know and does not see?
“Feeling … Perception … Determinations … Consciousness is a world-phenomenon in the world to which the Tathāgata has awakened and broken through. Having done so, he explains it, teaches it, proclaims it, establishes it, discloses it, analyses it, elucidates it. When it is being thus explained … and elucidated by the Tathāgata, if anyone does not know and see, how can I do anything with that foolish worldling, blind and sightless, who does not know and does not see? SN 22 : 94
But why refusing to deal with the problem by closing eyes on it? Venerable Chana was able to see that there is a problem which he doesn’t understand:
Then it occurred to the Venerable Channa: “I too think in this way: ‘Form is impermanent … consciousness is impermanent. Form is nonself … consciousness is nonself. All determinations are impermanent; all things are nonself.’ But my mind does not launch out upon the stilling of all determinations, the relinquishing of all acquisitions, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, Nibbāna; nor does it acquire confidence, settle down, and resolve on it. Instead, agitation and clinging arise and the mind turns back, thinking: ‘But who is my self?’ But such does not happen to one who sees the Dhamma
SN 22: 90
So regarding determinations, (sankhara) in Suttas the very act of determining what is my self is sankhara:
He regards matter—or feeling, or perception, or determinations, or consciousness—as self. That is a determination…. In an uninformed commoner contacted by feeling born of nescience-contact, monks, there is craving arisen; thence is born that determination. Thus, monks, that determination is impermanent, determined, dependently arisen; and that craving too is impermanent, deter-mined, dependently arisen; and that feeling too is impermanent, determined, dependently arisen; and that contact too is imperma-nent, determined, dependently arisen; and that nescience too is impermanent, determined, dependently arisen.
<S. XXII,81:iii,96-7>
This world is anguished, being exposed to contact,
Even what the world calls self is in fact ill;
For no matter upon what it conceives (its conceits of self),
The fact is ever other than that (which it conceives).
The world, whose being is to become other,
Is committed to being, is exposed to being, relishes only being,
Yet what it relishes brings fear, and what it fears is pain.
Now this holy life is lived to abandon suffering. Ud. 3:10
So we here the fundamental contradiction between assumed permanence of self and impermanence of things with which self can be identified. This problem is the problem of sankhara dukkha which can be stated in the following ways:
And where does the Buddha’s Teaching come in? If we understand the ‘eternal’ (which for Kierkegaard is ultimately God—i.e. the soul that is part of God) as the ‘subject’ or ‘self’, and ‘that which be-comes’ as the quite evidently impermanent ‘objects’ in the world (which is also K.’s meaning), the position becomes clear. What we call the ‘self’ is a certain characteristic of all experience, that seems to be eternal. It is quite obvious that for all men the reality and permanence of their selves, ‘I’, is taken absolutely for granted; and the discrepancy that K. speaks of is simply that between my ‘self’ (which I automatic-ally presume to be permanent) and the only too manifestly impermanent ‘things’ in the world that ‘I’ strive to possess. The eternal ‘subject’ strives to possess the temporal ‘object’, and the situation is at once both comic and tragic—comic, because something temporal cannot be possessed eternally, and tragic, because the eternal cannot desist from making the futile attempt to possess the temporal eternally . This tragi-comedy is suffering (dukkha) in its profoundest sense. And it is release from this that the Buddha teaches. How? By pointing out that, con-trary to our natural assumption (which supposes that the subject ‘I’ would still continue to exist even if there were no objects at all), the existence of the subject depends upon the existence of the object; and since the object is manifestly impermanent, the subject must be no less so. And once the presumed-eternal subject is seen to be no less temporal than the object, the discrepancy between the eternal and the temporal disappears (in four stages—sotàpatti, sakadàgàmità, anàgà-mità, and arahatta); and with the disappearance of the discrepancy the two categories of ‘tragic’ and ‘comic’ also disappear. The arahat neither laughs nor weeps; and that is the end of suffering (except, of course, for bodily pain, which only ceases when the body finally breaks up).
In this way you may see the progressive advance from the thoughtlessness of immediacy (either childish amusement, which refuses to take the tragic seriously, or pompous earnestness, which refuses to take the comic humorously) to the awareness of reflexion (where the tragic and the comic are seen to be reciprocal, and each is given its due), and from the awareness of reflexion (which is the limit of the puthujjana’s philosophy) to full realization of the ariya dhamma (where both tragic and comic finally vanish, never again to return).
Or
But now you say, ‘If all things are characterized by dukkha….’ This needs careful qualification. In the first place, the universal dukkha you refer to here is obviously not the dukkha of rheumatism or a toothache, which is by no means universal. It is, rather, the sankhaa-dukkha (the unpleasure or suffering connected with determinations) of this Sutta passage:
There are, monk, three feelings stated by me: sukha feeling, dukkha feeling, neither-dukkha-nor-sukha feeling. These three feelings have been stated by me. But this, monk, has been stated by me: whatever is felt, that counts as dukkha. But that, monk, was said by me with reference just to the impermanence of determinations…. (Vedanà Samy . 11: iv,216)
But what is this dukkha that is bound up with impermanence? It is the implicit taking as pleasantly-permanent (perhaps ‘eternal’ would be better) of what actually is impermanent. And things are implicitly taken as pleasantly-permanent (or eternal) when they are taken (in one way or another) as ‘I’ or ‘mine’ (since, as you rightly imply, ideas of subjectivity are associated with ideas of immortality). And the puthujjana takes all things in this way. So, for the puthujjana, all things are (sankhara-)dukkha. How then—and this seems to be the crux of your argument—how then does the puthujjana see or know (or adjudge) that ‘all things are dukkha’ unless there is some background (or criter-ion or norm) of non-dukkha (i.e. of sukha) against which all things stand out as dukkha? The answer is quite simple: he does not see or know (or adjudge) that ‘all things are dukkha’. The puthujjana has no criterion or norm for making any such judgement, and so he does not make it.
The puthujjana’s experience is (sankhara-)dukkha from top to bottom, and the consequence is that he has no way of knowing dukkha for himself; for however much he ‘steps back’ from himself in a reflexive effort he still takes dukkha with him. (I have discussed this question in terms of avijja (‘nescience’) in A Note on Pañiccasamuppàda §§23 & 25, where I show that avijja which is dukkhe aññanam (‘non-knowledge of dukkha’), has a hierarchical structure and breeds only itself.) The whole point is that the puthujjana’s non-knowledge of dukkha is the dukkha that he has non-knowledge of; and this dukkha that is at the same time non-knowledge of dukkha is the puthujjana’s (mistaken) acceptance of what seems to be a ‘self’ or ‘subject’ or ‘ego’ at its face value (as nicca/sukha/attà, ‘permanent/ pleasant/self’).
And how, then, does knowledge of dukkha come about? How it is with a Buddha I can’t say (though it seems from the Suttas to be a matter of prodigiously intelligent trial-by-error over a long period); but in others it comes about by their hearing (as puthujjanas) the Buddha’s Teaching, which goes against their whole way of thinking. They accept out of trust (saddha) this teaching of anicca/dukkha/anatta; and it is this that, being accepted, becomes the criterion or norm with reference to which they eventually come to see for themselves that all things are dukkha—for the puthujjana. But in seeing this they cease to be puthujjanas and, to the extent that they cease to be puthujjanas, to that extent (sankhara-)dukkha ceases, and to that extent also they have in all their experience a ‘built-in’ criterion or norm by reference to which they make further progress. (The sekha—no longer a puthujjana but not yet an arahat—has a kind of ‘double vision’, one part un-regenerate, the other regenerate.) As soon as one becomes a sotà-panna one is possessed of aparapaccayà nanam, or ‘knowledge that does not depend upon anyone else’: this knowledge is also said to be ‘not shared by puthujjanas’, and the man who has it has (except for accelerating his progress) no further need to hear the Teaching—in a sense he is (in part) that Teaching.
So far, then, from its being a Subject (immortal soul) that judges ‘all things are dukkha’ with reference to an objective sukha, it is only with subsidence of (ideas of) subjectivity that there appears an (objective) sukha with reference to which the judgement ‘all things are dukkha (for the commoner)’ becomes possible at all. Nanavira Thera
Refusing to deal with assumed permanence of the subject, one in fact must remain on the level of Bhikkhu Boddhi who in his critique of Ven Nanavira writings says:
An unbiased and complete survey of the Nikáyas, however, would reveal that the problem of dukkha to which the Buddha’ s Teaching is addressed is not primarily existential anxiety , nor even the distorted sense of self of which such anxiety may be symptomatic. The primary problem of dukkha with which the Buddha is concerned, in its most comprehensive and fundamental dimensions, is the problem of our bondage to samsara—the round of repeated birth, aging, and death. And, as I will show presently , these terms are intended quite literally as signifying biological birth, aging, and death, not our anxiety over being born, growing old, and dying.
What Venerable Bodhi is talking about? It is hard to say since if phrsse “the distorted sense of self” means something it must mean attavada and sakkayadithi which is precisely the dukkha from which sotapanna successfully freed oneself and “the round of repeated birth, aging, and death” comes to the end for one who arrived at the cessation of the conceit “I am”, the very thing on which Nanavira Thera put the strongest emphasis in his writing.
Summarise: knowledge about impermanence, suffering and the nature of not-self of all things is the same thing, and if one hopes to arive one day at the understanding of impermanence, one must face the problem of the asumed permanence of the subject, the person (sakkaya). Without this background one will remain on the level of pseudo-explanations which feed only one’s own ignorance.
