Impermanence, non-self and suffering: the essence of Buddhism, seen through one map (second look)

The three marks of existence are the Buddhist teaching that everything conditioned is impermanent, unsatisfactory and without a self, and this is my second look at Buddhism in a series where I hold the essence of different traditions against one map, the Present Attention and Happiness Matrix from my book. The first look was at craving, aversion and delusion. Since then the series has visited the Bhagavad Gita, the Sermon on the Mount, the Stoics and a teaching from Islam. As in each of those, I am not explaining the tradition; its own teachers do that. I am describing how three of its central claims look when I hold them against the nine positions attention can take.

The short version

• Impermanence: through the map, the most immediate evidence is not mountains eroding but thoughts ending. The book asks you to watch a strong thought arise and pass, and notes that even severe distress comes and goes with where attention is
• Non-self: in the book's account, every part of the sense of "I" needs a past or a future to stand on. In Present + Neutral (presence), held on its own, the usual self cannot be put together
• Suffering, or unsatisfactoriness: the book's claim is that eight of the nine positions disturb peace of mind, including the pleasant ones, and only the centre does not
• The three are not separate on the map. They are three descriptions of the same movement: attention leaving the present
• Comparing helps understanding. Mixing practices is a different thing, and the book asks readers not to

What the teaching says

In the Buddhist teaching, the three marks are three features that everything conditioned shares. Impermanence: whatever arises passes. Unsatisfactoriness, often translated as suffering: what is impermanent cannot be a lasting source of satisfaction, and clinging to it as if it could is where distress comes from. Non-self: in what arises and passes, there is no fixed, unchanging self to be found; what we take to be "I" is a process, not a thing.

Those are my plain-language paraphrases, and the teaching is far richer than three sentences. What I want to do here is narrower: look at where each of the three sits on the map.

How it looks on the map

The Present Attention and Happiness Matrix sorts every moment of attention into nine attention states: past, present or future, combined with liking, disliking or neutral.

Which of these does your mind visit most? See your mind score - free.

Impermanence: thoughts do not last even seconds

The teaching usually reaches people through large examples: bodies age, buildings fall, nothing is kept. Through the map, the first evidence is much closer than that. My book asks the practitioner to notice how even strong thoughts arise and pass. A thought that feels like it will never end has usually been replaced within seconds, by the next one in the chain. The feeling of permanence is itself a thought, and it goes too.

The book pushes this further, into what it calls "nothing stays, even with serious problems". Its example is a person with a serious diagnosis who sits down to watch a film. For two hours attention is absorbed in the story, and the distress about the illness is not present. The illness has not changed. The distress returns when attention returns to the thoughts that make it: "why did this happen" in Past + Dislikes (regret), "what if the treatment fails" in Future + Dislikes (worry). The book's claim is that the problem may be continuous but the suffering about it is not; it arises when attention is in those positions and dissolves when attention leaves them.

That is impermanence as the map sees it: not a doctrine about the universe, but something you can watch in your own mind this afternoon.

Non-self: the self is found outside the centre

This is the mark I find most precise through the grid, and it rests on an experiment from the book.

The book asks: try to find any part of your sense of self without using the past or the future. Your name is a memory. Your job is a memory and a plan. Your worries about what you are becoming are a projection. Your opinion of yourself is built from events already over. Every part of a self needs a past or a future to stand on. The present, held on its own, does not give it one. In the book's words, in pure present-moment attention the usual sense of "self" cannot be constructed.

The same point appears from another side in the book's account of the ego. There, the ego is a collection of self-referring thoughts, the story of "me and mine", and it is what generates the liking and disliking that fill eight of the nine positions. The one position where the ego's influence is minimal or absent is Present + Neutral: there is nothing being protected or enhanced, no identity being threatened or validated. And the book's identity chapter makes the claim in the plainest form I know: you are not your circumstances, you are the thought patterns about your circumstances. The patient absorbed in the film is not, in that moment, a patient. The identity exists only while attention is engaged in building it.

The founder's own one-line version, from his notes, is this: the "I" exists only outside the middle box. The past and the future give a self something to stand on, and liking and disliking give it something to protect; Present + Neutral gives it neither. Through the map, non-self is not a claim that you do not exist. It is an observation about which positions a self can be found in, and which one it cannot.

Suffering: the cost of eight positions

The third mark is the one most people meet first, because it is the one they came to the teaching with.

The book's claim is that eight of the nine positions carry a cost, paid in the present, and only the centre does not. Its word for the eight is poisonous, and it is careful to say that this is not a moral judgement: every mind produces these thoughts. The cost is specific to each. Past + Dislikes builds regret; Future + Dislikes builds anxiety; Past + Likes builds longing; Future + Likes builds craving and impatience.

The part of the teaching that surprises people, and the part where the map and the tradition seem to me to agree most closely, is that the pleasant positions carry a cost too. Present + Likes (holding) is a grip on a good moment, and the grip is already a thought about keeping it, already slightly in the future. The book's account of Past + Likes is that it builds a nostalgic or dissatisfied disposition when visited often: the good old days make today smaller. In the book's language, pleasant feelings start chains too, and a chain that begins with a compliment can end, four thoughts later, in fear. The post on why feeling good is the blind spot is about exactly that.

Unsatisfactoriness, seen this way, is not a claim that life is bad. It is the observation that none of the eight positions can be rested in, because each one is attention away from where experience is actually happening, and the mind keeps trying to rest in them anyway.

Three marks, one movement

What strikes me most, holding the three against the grid, is that they stop being three.

Impermanence is what you see when you watch any position: it ends. Non-self is what you see when you ask which position a self can be found in: not the centre. Suffering is what you see when you ask what the eight positions cost: the present. All three are descriptions of the same thing, attention leaving the present and the price of its leaving. The map does not add anything to the teaching. It gives the three marks one address, and the address is the same for all of them.

What this does not do

This post uses the Present Attention and Happiness Matrix, the author's own model from The Return of Attention. It describes experience, not a diagnosis. How the matrix works.

It does not explain Buddhism. The tradition has its own teachers, texts and centuries of commentary, and they are the right guides. This post describes how three of its claims look to me through the map, and nothing more.

It does not say the map is Buddhist, or that Buddhism is the map. This series looks at several traditions through the same grid, and it will look at more. The map is mine, from my own watching, and the book says where every claim comes from.

It does not claim that seeing impermanence makes loss easy. The book's observation about the film is that distress has gaps, not that it is gone.

And it does not suggest combining the two practices, for the reason below.

Comparing, not mixing

The preface of my book carries one instruction that applies to every post in this series: "Do not mix this with other practices, physically or mentally and expect results. Allow your own judgment to come at the end of the practice, not before."

Comparing two descriptions of the mind is a way to understand both. Practising two methods at once is something else, and it is not what I am suggesting. If you follow a Buddhist practice, its teachers are the right guides for that path. If you want to try the map, the place to start is the nine attention states and the one position with no movement in it, Present + Neutral.

Common questions

What are the three marks of existence? In Buddhist teaching, three features shared by everything conditioned: impermanence (whatever arises passes), unsatisfactoriness or suffering (what passes cannot be a lasting satisfaction), and non-self (no fixed self is found in what arises and passes).

How does impermanence look on the Present Attention and Happiness Matrix? As thoughts ending. The book asks you to watch a strong thought arise and pass, and notes that even severe distress comes and goes with where attention is: present when attention is in the positions that make it, absent when it is not.

What does non-self mean in everyday terms? Through the map, that every part of the sense of "I" needs a past or a future to stand on, and that in present-moment attention the usual self cannot be put together. The book's identity experiment is the practical version.

Is suffering the same as pain? Not in the book's account. Pain reaches the senses; suffering is the thought about it, in one of the eight positions outside the centre. The same split is the subject of recognition is not rejection.

Is this map taken from Buddhism? This series compares how different traditions look through one map. It is not a claim about where any of them come from.