Impermanent Nature Of All Phenomena

Oct 30, 2004, 12.00am IST
Suresh Jindal.

Phenomena have no inherent nature. Essential to undertaking the Buddhist soteriological path is the understanding of the Four Seals or Axioms: All conditioned phenomena are impermanent and transitory, all contaminated phenomena are, by nature, suffering, all phenomena are empty of self-existence and Nirvana is true peace.



The disintegrating diamond of the morning dew, the ephemeral rainbow, the swathes of whirling mists against the dusky mountains are all manifest forms of the impermanent nature of phenomena. We directly experience it in the impermanence of our bodily vitality sinking towards the inevitability of death, and in the shifting sands of our mental and emotional states. The aggregates of our feelings, discrimination, ambitions and goals and their accompanying mental states are perpetually unstable and continually disintegrating.

Buddhism posits causality, that resultant manifestations are fruition of causes and conditions, circumstances and environments. Hence all phenomena are 'other-powered' and 'conditioned' by a myriad factors. The same causes and conditions that empower them are also embedded with seeds of their decay and disintegration. All phenomena both external and internal from the stars to our aggregates and mental states, are changing moment to moment, from in-breath to out-breath right up to old age, sickness and death.


Buddha identified three types of suffering. First, suffering of the form-body due to illness, disease, or accident. Second, suffering of change may be seen in the context of the eight-worldly dharmas when fame turns to disgrace, plaudits turn to blame, riches to rags, and mental and emotional happiness gets suffocated by sorrow.


The third is suffering 'other-powered' by our karmic deeds.

We have been continually drowning in the four turbulent rivers of birth, sickness, old age and death. We are
imprisoned by material factors of wants and greed, our feelings, discriminating awareness, ambitions and mental defilement.

Whatever goal we achieve leaves us dissatisfied and craving for more. But the more we grasp at external elements to secure and dignify ourselves the more hollow and unfulfilling they become. The hallucination of positing permanence, solidity and anchors to phenomena that are insubstantial, momentary and transitory begin with the solidification of ego. The ego starts pigeonholing 'others' into friends and enemies; into those who allow the ego to have its dictatorship and those who oppose it. Around itself it builds a prison of claustrophobia, paranoia, competition and speed. Meantime 'I' am always changing; my health is not as robust, my wealth has taken a dent, my child-ren are alienated from me. The 'I' remains as confused and be-wildered and ever-suffocated in the mire of misery and suffering.

The 'I' is not to be found as an independent, self-existing entity. The self that is so cherished, nurtured and
often violently defended against those perceived to be endangering it is nowhere to be found — in space, in the mind or the body. This disconnect, between the hallucination of a permanent 'I' and its ultimate nature, which lacks any and all self-existence, is the deep chasm from which our suffering arises and into which our pleasures are constantly tumbling.
Impermanent phenomena can and do change. Suffering can cease when the causes of its perpetuation and energy cease; when the three poisons of ignorance, attachment and hatred cease feeding and cannibalising on each other. This cessation of afflictive emotions is Nirvana — the state of true peace.