Dhamma: The Three Marks of Existence (AQA GCSE Religious Studies A (8062))

The Three Marks of Existence: Impermanence (Anicca)

What are the Three Marks of Existence?

• Buddhism teaches that there are three aspects to everything that exists, whether living or non-living

• These are called the three marks of existence, sometimes known as the Three Universal Truths

• They are:

  • Anicca – impermanence

  • Anatta – no fixed soul or self

  • Dukkha – suffering or unsatisfactoriness

The Three Marks of Existence

The Three Marks of Existence

What is Anicca?

• Anicca means impermanence. It refers to the fact that everything constantly changes

• Buddhism teaches that suffering or dukkha arises when humans get too attached to things and resist change

• Awareness of anicca results in the letting go of things and therefore lessens suffering

What is affected by Anicca?

• Anicca affects the world in three ways:

The Three Effects of Anicca

The Story of Kisa Gotami

• This is a traditional Buddhist story that explains how an awareness of anicca can help people overcome attachment and therefore reduce suffering:

  • Kisa Gotami was a woman whose child died

  • She was upset and refused to believe it

  • The Buddha told her to go to all the houses in the village and ask for a mustard seed from any house in which no one had lost a family member

  • Every house she went to had lost someone; she could not find a house where no one had died

  • Eventually, Kisa Gotami realised that she had been so focused on her own grief that she hadn’t noticed the grief of others

  • She realised that death is inescapable and that she needed to let go of her attachment to her dead child

  • She buried her child and became a follower of the Buddha

The Three Marks of Existence: No Fixed Self (Anatta)

What is Anatta?

• Anatta is the idea that people do not have a fixed soul or self

• This means that nobody has an unchanging personal identity

• Instead, a person is made up of five aspects, called the five aggregates or skandhas

The Five Aggregates

• Buddhists divide the self into five parts or aggregates to show that there is no unchanging essence to a person

• Each part is constantly changing, so the “self” is constantly changing

• This teaching is particularly important to the Theravada Buddhism school

The Five Aggregates

The Story of Nagasena and the Chariot

• This is a story illustrating anatta

  • About 200 years after the Buddha a monk arrived at the court of a Greek king, Milinda

  • The king asked the monk his name and he said he was called Nagasena

  • But he added that this was only his name and not any reference to his real self or person

  • The king was confused and asked who was standing before him

  • Nagasena used the analogy of the chariot in his reply

  • A chariot is made up of different parts, like the wheels, the axle or the yoke

  • The name “chariot” refers to all of these parts grouped together

  • If you dismantle the parts it is no longer a chariot

  • It is the same with people: a person exists only because of the parts they are made up from

  • There is no separate “self” that is independent of these parts

The Analogy of the Chariot

The analogy of the chariot is used to show that the term “chariot” refers to all the parts that make up a chariot, just as a “person” exists only because of the parts they are made up from

The Three Marks of Existence: Suffering (Dukkha)

What is Dukkha?

• Dukkha means suffering, dissatisfaction or unsatisfactoriness

• Buddhists believe that suffering is inevitable in life

The Three Types of Dukkha

• The Buddha taught that there are three types of dukkha:

The three types of dukkha

• The Buddha also taught that there are seven states of suffering:

The Seven States of Suffering

The Seven States of Suffering