Skip to content
Unitive Knowledge Society
Search

Accents are optional; quotes find an exact phrase.

Three marks of existence

Impermanence, suffering and not-self: the characteristics of all conditioned things.

Also: tilakkhana

Early Buddhism and the Theravāda

The three marks, tilakkhaṇa, are anicca, impermanence; dukkha, unsatisfactoriness; and anattā, not-self. To see them directly in one’s own experience is the work of insight meditation. Some later Mahāyāna formulations, the “seals of the Dharma”, replace suffering with nirvāṇa as peace.