Where does the three marks of existence first show up?
I was under the impression the three marks of existence were anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and anattā (without self).
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Your impression is correct as far as I know, but can you be a bit more precise about
What do you mean by that? Which collection, which sutta number, etc? Also, what do you mean by “first”? How can we tell, if for example, its shows up in say DN X and SN 2X, which one is “first”?
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I had either earliest canonical/sutta reference in mind.
I was curious because
Blockquote
I was under the impression the three marks of existence were anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and anattā (without self).
"Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) disagrees.
He says the three marks are impermanence, non-self, and nirvana. In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (p 20)
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I think they show up when Nacca-gita-vadita-visukkadassana mala-gandha-vilepana-dharana-mandana-vibhusanathana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami becomes Nacca-gita-vadita-visuka-dassana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami & Mala-gandha-vilepana-dharana-mandana-vibhusanatthana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami.
This makes me wonder why he’s teaching it like this. I’ve looked through the Canon, but I’m having a hard time finding anything that supports this interpretation. It doesn’t quite make sense to replace dukkha with nibbāna. What might I be overlooking?
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Hi
I hope this finds you well.
I believe TNH is following Mahayana texts.
best wishes
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Hi
I hope this finds you well.
I have only found them in the Dhammapada vv 277-9. SuttaCentral
It seems later tradition promotes them as ‘universal’ characteristics, but that does not match with early teachings as I have found them.
The Five Aggregates with Clinging - The First Noble Truth, would have the three characteristics, but the Five Aggregates without Clinging, those of the Buddha and Arahats, would not have dukkha (mental suffering, stress), as they are not clung to.
best wishes
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Hi,
The Buddha taught that anything conditional is dukkha. That’s what the three characteristics point to.
AN3.136:
‘All conditions are suffering.’
Sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā’.
SN22.15:
What’s impermanent is suffering.
Yad aniccaṁ taṁ dukkhaṁ
As a couple of examples.
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Hi Jasudho
yes, I’m very familiar with the standard teachings.
I don’t accept that things are suffering just because they are impermanent.
I accept the First Noble Truth that the 5 clung-to aggregates are suffering, not that the Five Aggregates are suffering.
So for me, the Buddha became the Sammā-sam-Buddha under the Bodhi Tree, ended all dukkha, understood as mental stress, and lived an enlightened life for 45 years. He obviously didn’t end aging and sickness and to me, they are not suffering if not clung to.
I would encourage you to follow the Buddha’s advice and not present beliefs as truth, which he called ‘safeguarding the truth’ and which allows for us changing our beliefs in the future.
Listening to you declare to me what the Buddha taught, sounds like preaching and quite closed minded.
As the Kalama suttas tells us, not just to accept something as truth, because it is written in a sacred text.
best wishes
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So, jhana is also dukkha? Because jhana is also something conditional.
Why do people become totally wild with these dukkha states? And why does Buddha talk about them as pleasurable abiding while according you they are dukkha states? Is jhana then the summum of delusion because they are really states of dukkha but not experienced that way?
And why does the sutta say:
But dispelling the conceit ‘I am’
is truly the ultimate happiness.” (ud2.1)
Is that not delusional because in your view also this realisation is conditional and dukkha?
And why do endless suttas talk about the supreme state of sublime peace while all is conditional and suffering according you?
Your understanding of Dhamma-, there are only conditionally arising formations and states, also means that all this suttas talking about happines, peace, pleasure is only delusional talk. Merely the intoxication of one who does not know and see, right?
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Hi,
Quoting the suttas, the Teachings, is not accepting something just because it’s written. Nor is it parroting unexamined beliefs. Beyond personal experience, it’s the closest we can come to sharing what the Buddha taught.
This forum doesn’t allow, appropriately, the sharing of personal practice experiences, so out come the suttas…
So offering sutta citations is not presenting “beliefs as truth.” It’s offering evidence.
It’s true that the teachings can be, and are, interpreted differently. That’s, in part, why there are so many discussions on this site!
Imo they’re not as fruitful when interpretations and understandings of others are waved away with ad hominem attacks of “preaching and close minded.”
These do nothing to support your points.
If we see things differently, fine. We can choose to discuss or not.
BTW, the five grasping aggregates are only present now, according to DO and many other teachings, because of the very craving and grasping that the Buddha says must cease for liberation. How else could they have arisen?
And as the Buddha taught, anything that has arisen from conditions is dukkha.
If the khandhas need to cease, they must fundamentally be dukkha, since final nibbana is the cessation of all dukkha. Yes? The Buddha never says the khandhas remain after the final death of an arahant.
Meanwhile in SN56.11:
"Now this is the noble truth of suffering. Rebirth is suffering; old age is suffering; illness is suffering; death is suffering; association with the disliked is suffering; separation from the liked is suffering; not getting what you wish for is suffering. "
The Buddha states these arise due to craving and are dukkha and doesn’t qualify this by saying “only when clung to.”
And while an arahant is alive, you may wish to consider the two arrows analogy.
Just saying…
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Do you mean this bit?
the argument, “Impermanent, therefore suffering, therefore nonself” is illogical. Of course, if we believe that something is permanent or has a self, we may suffer when we discover that it is impermanent and without a separate self. But, in many texts, suffering is regarded as one of the Three Dharma Seals, along with impermanence and nonself. It is said that all teachings of the Buddha bear the Three Dharma Seals.2 To put suffering on the same level as impermanence and nonself is an error. Impermanence and nonself are “universal.” They are a “mark” of all things. Suffering is not. It is not difficult to see that a table is impermanent and does not have a self separate of all non-table elements, like wood, rain, sun, furniture maker, and so on. But is it suffering? A table will only make us suffer if we attribute permanence or separateness to it. When we are attached to a certain table, it is not the table that causes us to suffer. It is our attachment. We can agree that anger is impermanent, without a separate self, and filled with suffering, but it is strange to talk about a table or a flower as being filled with suffering. The Buddha taught impermanence and nonself to help us not be caught in signs.
If so I think he is saying something different.
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I guess my counter argument here would be that you are “attributing separateness” to it as soon as you think of it as “a table.”
The index led me to this lovely alternative list:
“Mendicants, the conditioned has these three characteristics. What three? Arising is evident, vanishing is evident, and change while persisting is evident. These are the three characteristics of the conditioned.”
~ AN 3.47
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Hi,
Yes.
They are “tastes” of liberation and can be very blissful.
But since, as the Buddha taught, they are constructed and impermanent they are fundamentally dukkha, i.e. not nibbāna.
This was said by the Buddha, who has utterly let go of all defilements and the “I am” conceit.
So this is an expression of the happiness experienced while alive by an awakened one.
Because they’re pointing to nibbāna, which is not conditional.
Not sure how you came to this conclusion, since no one is denying the possibility of liberation and final nibbāna.
Who has said otherwise?
The point is that until awakening/liberation, all we have to work with and experience are the aggregates and senses – which are conditional.
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Well, it looks like you do not want to accept any feedback on your behaviour.
“The Buddha taught…” is not quoting a sutta. It is stating a belief as a truth.
This is rightly quoting a sutta:
“according to this sutta, the Budha taught…”
I doubt we would have any further useful discussion.
best wishes
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Hi
yes, very logical and I don’t have a problem with that.
best wishes
The problem is, i feel, that suffering becomes something theoretical when it is merely defined as…all what changes is suffering…or change is suffering…all that conditionally arises is suffering. Such definitions, i feel are of no worth.
I feel, defining suffering is not wise. Suffering must somehow be relate to an experience of suffering. And that also means that suffering is something subjective and our perception of it can change.
People who know very subtle mental states like jhana, they start to see and feel that what most people experience as happiness, such as being enthousiastic, having nice tastes, being optimistic, excited, delighted, is really burdensome compared to these peaceful mental states. So, this is relative and can change too.
But just to define suffering is, i feel, not the Path of the Buddha. So, if he says that all that is conditionally arising is dukkha, i believe, he says this because he knows that the stilling of all formations (the second truth that he found, together with Paticca Samuppada, MN26) is actually known as the end of suffering. It represents an ultimate peace and cooled dimension. And he actually knows this dimension too.
He described in for example Ud8.1 and others.
And from this perspective there is a real reason to say that conditionally arising formations, as long as they arise, exist and cease, still represent an element of dukkha, because it is not that ultimate peace of stilling of all formations.
The stilling of all formations is not an absence but it reveals to be an ultimate peace and coolness, an extinquishment. This is a dimension in the life of every being. Our birthright. One who knows this dimension also knows that when at death all formations cease, only suffering ceases.
Mere cessation is based upon the idea that there is nothing not desintegrating, stable, reliable. You are such a believer, i have seen. You believe that Buddha taught there are only formations and states, and there is nothing else. No sutta says so.
No sutta says so. There is also that dimension that is refered to as asankhata dhatu.
And only by seeing this, one enters the stream. Because it represents what is already pure and dispassionate. And supra mundane right view …concentration is based upon that, according the suttas.
The only use of contemplating anicca, dukkha and anatta is that one gets more feeling, more in touch, with what has no nature to arise, and cease and change and is already pure and dispassionate and not of this world, beyond merit and demerit.
Buddha taught this way the Path to Asankhata (SN43).
Hi,
This is not true. I tried to make that explicitly clear in my last post and in prior ones.
So maybe one can reduce this tendency to make incorrect attributions to others?
I know you take this to mean an ineffable “something” that is always present. That’s your interpretation. Fine.
Others understand it differently and can support their understanding with teachings in the suttas and via their experiences in practice.
So, whatever one’s views and understanding are, to say
is not really valid.
Apparently, they don’t say so to you.
To others, they do.
But we agree that dukkha is experienced and more than just a definition.
Hi @LeoCGOR,
Good question.
If you mean the term “three characteristics” (or “three marks of existence”), then that term is not found in the early Pali suttas. It probably first shows up in the Abhidhamma or otherwise the canonical commentaries, although I don’t know exactly where. Perhaps it’s Chinese equivalent is present in some of the Agama’s, which could be even earlier.
Either way, I don’t think the Buddha himself would have used this specific term.
In the Pali suttas, non-self is called a “characteristic” I believe only in the title of the Anattalakkhana Sutta (SN22.59), but sutta titles are generally later than the sutta themselves. And the sutta also goes under another name which may be earlier: Pañcavaggiya Sutta, after the group of five monks.
Of course, we often encounter the three-fold group of anicca, dukkha, anatta, from the very earliest texts. And these are closely linked. So it’s no surprise they got a name as a group, at some point in time.
However, Thay Thich Nhat Hahn goes by a Samyukta Agama text of the Sarvāstivāda school, SA262:
The monks then told Chandaka, “Form is impermanent. Feeling … conception … volition … awareness is imperament. All actions are impermanent. All things are selfless. Nirvāṇa is peaceful cessation.”
The sūtra doesn’t call these “three characteristics” either, so that may also be a later innovation.
The parallel at SN22.90 instead has:
“Reverend Channa, form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness are impermanent. Form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness are not-self. All conditions are impermanent. All things are not-self.”
Interestingly, dukkha is missing here, which otherwise we will always find after anicca.
There is also a group of “four characteristics” in some Mahayana texts, which combines the standard three characteristics together with “nirvana is peace”.
For more info on all this see here:
Hope that helps. 
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So, i am wrong when i sum up your understanding of Dhamma like this: In the end there are merely 5 impersonal processes, aggregates. Liberation means that at death those aggregates do not re-arise again. This is the end ot birth, sickness, death. The real end of samsara and suffering is a mere cessation. Going out like a flame with nothing remaining?
[quote=“Jasudho, post:19, topic:37446”]
Others understand it differently and can support their understanding with teachings in the suttas and via their experiences in practice.
[quote=“Jasudho, post:19, topic:37446”]
Which experience? Blacking out? Moments of absence? Moments of lack of awareness? It probably means that one is very strongly identified with sense-vinnanas and looses awareness because of this when these cease.
I feel SN22.60 is what Buddh really taught about the khandhas and is also corresponding with our reality.
It clearly says that khandhas are not merely suffering but also bring pleasure, and that is the reason why we long for their renewal in this life and next.
This is really our world. No person in the entire world, at least almost none, knows any khandha as suffering. Lets be real. When the monks constant say…is what is impermant suffering or happiness.…suffering sir….they blindly follow an instruction but probably their experience is very different. Just as ours and as expressed in this suttas. But ofcourse the Buddha wants to disenchant his pupils.
One must no see the khandhas as happiness while we still experience them this way.
I think you and i know that it is very difficult to become really dispassionate towards the khandhas exaclty because they are not only suffering. That is the reality Buddha saw, I see, and probably you too. And especially when we suffer, we easily incline to renewal of khandha’s, feeling at least some momentary relief.