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The three characteristics ⏳

Ignorance ultimately involves three delusions surrounding the five aggregates. These delusions are the notions that the aggregates are permanent, a source of true satisfaction, and a self. The wisdom needed to break the spell of these delusions is insight into the five aggregates as Impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not self. This is called direct knowledge of the three characteristics of existence. Insight into one of the characteristics is sufficient enough for attaining Nibbana. However, the three characteristics are closley interwoven. The characteristic of impermanance reveals the charateristic of unsatisfactoriness, and both together reveal the characteristic of nonself.

First, the five aggregates are not self on the grounds that we cannot determine them and therefor do not have complete control over them, and since we cannot bend the aggregates to our will, they are unsatisfactory, subject to affliction, and therefor cannot be considered our self. Second, the five aggregates are all impermanent, all constantly changing. They are not the same for two consecutive moments. They are in a flux of momentary arising and disappearing. One thing disappears, conditioning the appearance of the next in a series of cause and effect. There is no unchanging substance in them. There is nothing behind them that can be called a permanent Self. Whatever is impermanent is in some way unsatisfactory, and what is impermanent and unsatisfacory cannot be identified as our self.

Everyone will agree that none of The five aggregates can really be called an ‘I’. When the five aggregates which are interdependent are working together in combination as a psycho-physiological machine, we get the idea of ‘I’. But this is only a false idea, a volitional formation, namely identity view. The five aggregates together, which we popularly call a ‘being’, are dissatisfaction itself. There is no other ‘being’ or ‘I’, standing behind the five aggregates, who experiences dissatisfaction. As Buddhaghosa says: ‘Mere suffering exists, but no sufferer is found; The deeds are, but no doer is found.’ There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say life is moving, but life is movement itself. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thougt, there if no thinker to be found. Here we cannot fail to notice how this view is diametrically opposed to the Cartesian “i think therefor i am.”

This inderect route to the characteristic of nonself is generally taken because the selfless nature of things is so subtle that it often cannot be seen except when pointed out by the other two characteristics. Once we recognize that the things we identify as our self are impermanent and unsatisfactory, we realize that they are empty of the essential marks of selfhood and we therefor stop identifying with them.

The different expositions on the three chatacteristics all thus converge on the irradication of clinging. They do so by showing, with regard to each of the five aggregates, “this is not mine, this i am not, this is not myself”. This makes insight into nonself as the culmanation and consumation of the contemplation of the three characteristics. Insight into the five aggregates through the three characteristics leads to disenchantment, dispassion, and liberation. One who attains liberation subsequently wins “the knowledge and vision of liberation”, the assurance that one is free from the taints, the round of rebirths have ended, and nothing more remains to be done.

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Type:🔵 Tags: Philosophy / Psychology Status:⛅️

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