Recognition of impermanence

17 discourses
Also known as: perception of impermanence
Pāli: anicca-saññā

In The Path of Dhamma (Dhammapada)

Dhammapada verses 100-115 share the importance of one teaching that brings peace, the benefits of self-conquest, the value of honoring the awakened, and the importance of rousing of energy and recognizing impermanence.

Dhammapada verses 146–156 explore impermanence, the nature of the body, and the inevitability of aging and death. Through metaphors of a world ablaze, a decaying body, the house-builder and a city of bones, they point to life's transience and the futility of clinging to sensual pleasures. The verses highlight the cultivation of wisdom, detachment, and the pursuit of an unconditioned state beyond constructs, contrasting fleeting youth and inevitable old age with the timeless teachings that lead to liberation.

Dhammapada verses 273–289 emphasize the eightfold path as the foremost way to liberation, seeing the impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self nature of all things. Further, the verses mention the relation of meditation and wisdom, They mention restraint, how wisdom through meditation, on cutting off the forest as well as the undergrowth, and making swift effort to purify by the way of practice leading to Nibbāna.

Dhammapada verses 360–382 depict the ideal bhikkhu as one who restrains the senses, body, speech, and mind, leading to freedom from suffering. Emphasis is placed on mindfulness, inner joy, collectedness, and self-reliance. Through discipline and reflection, the bhikkhu advances towards the peace of Nibbāna, shining like the moon freed from clouds.

In As It Was Said (Itivuttaka)

The Buddha describes how to see the three felt experiences that are experienced on contact through the sense doors - pleasant, painful, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant.

The body is fragile, consciousness is of a fading nature. All substrates of existence are impermanent, dissatisfactory, and subject to change.

The Buddha advises to 1) dwell contemplating the unattractive nature of the body, 2) establish mindfulness as the first priority while breathing in and out, and 3) observe impermanence in all conditioned phenomena.

In Middle Length Discourses (Majjhima Nikāya)

The Buddha instructs Rāhula on how to regard the five aggregates as not-self which he immediately applies to practice. The Buddha then teaches Rāhula on how to meditate on the elements, the divine abodes, unattractiveness, impermanence, and mindfulness of breathing to abandon unwholesome mental qualities and cultivate wholesome mental qualities.

The Buddha teaches in detail how to develop mindfulness while breathing in and out through sixteen naturally unfolding steps, showing how their cultivation fulfills the four establishments of mindfulness, which in turn fulfill the seven factors of awakening, culminating in true knowledge and liberation.

In Linked Discourses (Saṃyutta Nikāya)

Endowed with ten powers and four assurances, the Buddha reveals the impermanence of the five aggregates and teaches dependent co-arising.

The Buddha, endowed with the ten powers and four assurances, reveals the impermanence of the five aggregates and teaches dependent co-arising. He then urges the bhikkhus to practice with diligence for their highest welfare as well as for the welfare of others.

A bhikkhu asks the Buddha if there exists any form, feeling, perception, intentional constructs, or consciousness that is stable, enduring, and not subject to change.

The Buddha shares vivid similes to illustrate the benefits of developing the recognition of impermanence. This practice gradually exhausts all passion for sensual pleasure, materiality, becoming, ignorance, and uproots the conceit ‘I am.’

By clinging to the five aggregates, one experiences pleasure and pain.

The Buddha teaches on how to know and see the impermanence of the six sense bases and the process leading up to the arising of feeling and perception for the abandoning of ignorance and the arising of wisdom.

In Numerical Discourses (Aṅguttara Nikāya)

The Buddha describes these four inversions of perception, thought, and view, and the four non-inversions. An uninstructed ordinary person perceives permanence in the impermanent, pleasure in the unsatisfactory, a self in what is impersonal, and beauty in the unattractive.

When approached with abundant offerings, the Buddha expresses a heartfelt wish to avoid fame, and speaks of five contemplations which result in being established in dispassion and wisdom.

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