Search results for: "The Three Characteristics"
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- Truth with Boundaries… These include many of the other teachings that are widely associated with the Buddha, like the three characteristics or three perceptions, one of his greatest insights. He showed by the way he taught these things that sometimes they’re beneficial and sometimes they’re not, even though they’re true all the time. Not every truth is beneficial for applying in every case. When …
- Wisdom for Dummies… If there’s pain coming from past actions, it’s dukkha in the context of the three characteristics. It’s just part of the way things are. The suffering you’re adding, though, is dukkha in the four noble truths, which doesn’t have to be there. It comes from your craving, and that’s something you can do something about. There may be …
- Sensitivity Through Generosity… There’s a danger in trying to boil the Dhamma down to just a few principles – like the idea that all the Dhamma teachings come down to the three characteristics, that you just have to accept that things are impermanent, stressful, not self, and let it go at that. The Buddha didn’t teach that way. That was a particular teaching to be applied …
- Potentials… The person sending the email complained that with the other ajaans they’d had on these Zoom meetings, all they could talk about was the three characteristics and how you simply have to accept things and just take the world as it is. “Please say something that shows we can do something about the world, that we can do something about our minds,” the …
- Producing Experience… And it’s in that context that the teachings on the three characteristics have their true meaning, play their true role. Like the storytellers in the novel, we have to be careful about what we’re creating because we’re going to have to live in what we create. Keep asking yourself, “Is this good enough? Am I satisfied with what I’m creating …
- The Need for Stillness… Once there was a person from Singapore who wrote a letter to Ajaan Fuang describing his practice, which was to see everything in terms of the three characteristics. When he was at work, when he was watching TV, he just kept noting to himself: This is impermanent, stressful, not-self. Ajaan Fuang’s advice to him was to turn around and see who was …
- What You Sense Directly… It doesn’t even end in the three characteristics, it ends with the four noble truths—cause and effect around stress and suffering, and the path to the end of suffering: in other words, looking directly at what you’re doing right here, right now. That’s where these questions get answered. That’s the framework that helps you to answer them. So look …
- Right but Wrong… For instance, with the three characteristics or the three perceptions: They’re useful for developing dispassion for suffering, developing dispassion for the origination of suffering. That’s why they’re there. If you use them for another purpose, you’re gone wrong. If you see that the pleasures of sensuality are very undependable and they involve a lot of stress, you’re using the …
- Here Be Tigers… I’m supposed to get insight into the three characteristics, insight into emptiness.” Or whatever. But the first thing you’ve got to get insight into is the workings of your own mind, because some thoughts will want to pull you away from the breath, and you have to recognize: How do those thoughts form? These are the thoughts that rule our lives. Just …
- A Matter of Life & Death… There’s the stress of the three characteristics, which is everywhere in the conditioned realm. Then there’s stress in the context of the four noble truths, stress that comes from craving and ignorance. When he talks about putting an end to stress, that’s the one you put an end to, because once that’s put an end to, then the mind doesn …
- Look in the Mirror… After all, it accepts the truths of the three characteristics—or the three perceptions. It sees things as inconstant, stressful, not-self. But as the Buddha taught, seeing those things can simply take you to a very refined state of concentration. It’s attained by discernment, but it’s still a state of concentration—and it too is fabricated. Ajaan Lee has a good …
- Pull Yourself Up by Your Fetters… Similarly with the three characteristics: Everybody hears about things being inconstant, stressful, and not-self, so they want to let go of the five aggregates right away. But we need to hold on to the five aggregates in order to develop the path. The things that are stressful, you learn how to make easeful. The things that are inconstant, you learn how to make …
- Discernment Through Ardency & Evaluation… See what’s connected to what and then decide, “Okay, is it satisfactory?” When he came up with the teaching on what they call the three characteristics or the three perceptions, those were tools for evaluation in this process. In other words, if something seemed pleasant or good, he asked himself, “Okay, is it constant?” If there’s any inconstancy in here, it can …
- What Are You Doing?… There is an emphasis that’s developed over the centuries in different branches of Buddhism to focus on how things are empty or are marked by the three characteristics, saying that the problem is that we want them to be permanent but they’re not, we want them to have substance but they’re not. Well, permanence and substance may be issues sometimes, but …
- Stupid about Pleasure… Ajaan Chah, in one of his talks, refers to the knowledge of the three characteristics not as a truth, not as a form of discernment, but as a strength. That’s what it is: a strength. It gives you a solid place where you can stand outside your attachments and really look at them. For the most part, we just jump into our attachments …
- The Core of Experience… So we take the issues of “my long-term welfare and happiness” and translate them into the questions on the three characteristics, or, rather, the three perceptions. “Long-term” corresponds to the question about inconstancy. “Happiness” corresponds to the question on stress. And “my,” of course, corresponds to the question on self or not-self. So when you encounter things on the path of …
- Equanimity After Victory… If you think of the three characteristics as being the Buddha’s most important teachings, they do tend to point you toward equanimity, in the sense that “Well, I’ve just got to accept that things are inconstant, stressful and not-self. I can’t get a permanent happiness, so I’ve got to accept, be content with whatever I can get.” That’s …
- The Steadiness of Your Gaze… Why is the mind causing itself suffering? Why is it causing itself stress in ways that don’t have to be there? In the context of the Three Characteristics, the Buddha does point out that anything fabricated is stressful, but in the Four Noble Truths he focuses more on the issue of the stress of clinging and craving. The craving causes the clinging, and …
- Straightening the Arrow… Then there are the perceptions of the three characteristics: looking for the inconstancy in things, looking for the stress, seeing them as not-self. When you’re developing concentration, you don’t apply these perceptions to the concentration. Instead, you apply them to anything else that would disturb the mind. Even when you’re not in concentration, you often find that thinking about the …
- Cheating the System… There’s stress in the three characteristics, which is a given in the world. As long as things are put together, they’re going to malfunction. Things put together tend to fall apart. That’s their nature. That’s normal. But then there’s another kind of suffering, the suffering of the four noble truths, and that’s the problem the Buddha’s going …
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