Search results for: "The Three Characteristics"
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- sBeyond Acceptance… So you push against the three characteristics. Eventually, you find places where they push back. But you’re not going to know where the boundary is until you push. This fits in with the Buddha’s teachings on causality in general. Some of the things we experience right now are the result of past actions. In fact, he says all six senses are the …
- Discernment Performs… When you read what the Buddha said about not-self, for instance, or about the three characteristics, you have to know the right time and place for those teachings. There’s a sutta where a young monk is asked by a non-Buddhist ascetic, “What’s the result of action?” And the young monk says, “All action results in pain,” which was a Jain …
- Lessons in Happiness… This is when you start looking at them in terms of what are called the three characteristics, or, more accurately, three perceptions. These are the perceptions you apply: You look at them in terms of their inconstancy, in terms of the stress that’s there, and in terms of their being not-self—not you, not yours, not really under your control. You can …
- Concentration Work… There’s renunciate equanimity—that comes after you’ve contemplated things in terms of the three characteristics and gotten past them. So there are different ways of dividing the pie. The important thing is realizing that simply being equanimous about things, saying, “Well, I don’t want to get involved with things. I just want to let go”—lies at the bottom of the …
- Mindfulness Aims at Concentration… Which is why it’s so ironic that, when mindfulness is usually taught, one of the first things you’re told is, “Don’t get the mind into strong states of concentration, because you’ll get stuck.” And, secondly, you’re taught, “Look at things in terms of the three characteristics.” In other words, “Jump over the concentration. Then go straight to discernment practice …
- The Ivory Intersection… There’s the suffering and stress from the three characteristics, just the fact that things change: You can’t stop that. But then there’s the suffering that comes from your craving and clinging, and that’s something you are responsible for—and something you can do something about. These basic principles about everyday wisdom get applied deeper and deeper into the practice, so …
- Strength Training… I got a phone call the other night from someone who was talking about how he was trying to apply the three characteristics to everything that was happening to him. And it was just all concepts. I said, “You apply those perceptions to things that you’re attached to, because you want to see that they’re not worthy of attachment. Sometimes realizing their …
- Adolescent Practice… That’s the beginning of discernment, the beginning of insight into the three characteristic of inconstancy, stress, and not self. It’s crucial to the practice. It’s the stage where you’re not just obeying the rules for children. You’re actually getting a sense of how the rules really work, and of which ones apply to you as a mature meditator. And …
- The Science of Meditation… Those are the three characteristics or the three perceptions for developing dispassion. Right view has a larger framework: It’s all about the four noble truths. You’re looking for the stress, trying to comprehend it, until you can understand the cause. When you see the cause, you abandon it. The causal connection is what’s important there. Similarly with the path: The path …
- The Challenge of Right View… The other way is that once the mind is settled in, you can start applying what the commentaries call the three characteristics, although I discovered recently that term three characteristics is found nowhere in the Canon. The Buddha himself never used the term. When he talked about inconstancy, stress, and not-self—anicca, dukkha, anattā—he called them perceptions. You apply the perception of …
- Strong-hearted… Sometimes you hear it expressed as the three characteristics—seeing things as being inconstant, stressful, not-self—but those the Buddha calls perceptions. And those perceptions have meaning within the context of the framework provided by the four noble truths, which is that you’re trying to comprehend suffering and abandon its cause. So anything that would give rise to the desire to cling …
- Coming into the Present… This is where the perceptions of what are usually called the three characteristics come in. The Buddha never calls them three characteristics. And the word characteristic, lakkhana, is never compounded in the suttas with, say, anicca, dukkha, or anatta. They’re compounded with saññā, perception: the perception of inconstancy, the perception of stress, the perception of not-self. They’re also compounded with another …
- Persistence… It’s the factor that basically applies the three characteristics to things. But when the Buddha himself is describing sampajañña in the Canon, he doesn’t say that at all. For him, sampajañña is a matter of knowing what you’re doing while you’re doing it. That’s why I translate the word as “alertness.” When the Buddha explains ardency, it’s a …
- Insight in Concentration… There are the three characteristics right there. As you learn to drop the disturbance, you may find that there’s a resistance in the mind. That resistance is where you’re going to really gain insight as to why you want to hold on to things that are disturbances. What ideas, what values have you been carrying around that make you want to hold …
- Learning from Desire… If you read the commentaries, they’ll assign discernment to what they call clear comprehension of the three characteristics, which is their interpretation of alertness. But ardency, the desire to do this well: That’s where the discernment really comes from. So as you try to figure out, as the mind wanders off, why it’s wandering off, that’s when you learn. When …
- Breathing Skillfully… That’s what matters.” The fact that the mountain is heavy is the stress in what are called the three characteristics, or the three perceptions. That’s just the way things are. But the fact that you’re lifting it: That’s the problem. The weight that comes when you lift it is stress in the four noble truths—in other words, the stress …
- Exploring What You’ve Got… Again, it seems to be working at cross-purposes with the three characteristics, but you’re doing it as part of a strategy. The greater sense of ease you have in the present moment, the more delight you take in being here. The more constantly you can be here, the more you really learn about the mind. So don’t destroy your tools before …
- Guardian Meditations… And he was—to the point where he developed the three characteristics that we think about when we think of the Buddha: his purity, his wisdom, and his compassion. That was the kind of person who found this path. Now, the problem with thinking about how amazing a person the Buddha was, is that it’s hard for you to relate to him. In …
- On Deserving to Be Happy… We’re looking not for the three characteristics, we’re looking for the four noble truths and their duties, trying to keep those in mind. So we try to learn: How do you maintain this state of ease in the mind? First, of course, how do you give rise to it? When it’s not there, how can you nurture it? You explore. We …
- A Soiled, Oily Rag… One of the first letters we got from one of the members of the group was from a bank official who was saying that his practice of meditation was to see everything in terms of the three characteristics, that everything was inconstant, stressful and not-self. Whether he was at work, meditating, watching the TV, whatever, he was trying to see everything in terms …
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