Hello everyone,
I would also like to add something to this discussion. First of all, I would like to thank you, Lal, for bringing this Dhamma Talks by Jethavanarama Buddhist Monastery to our attention. I have watched the first 6 talks of the playlist “Buddha’s Guide to Happiness” on YouTube.
This monk speaks excellent English and has an interesting style of lecturing. He encourages the audience not to follow the Dhamma blindly but to put it to the test based on their own experience. He is undoubtedly very intelligent and I am sure he has gained deeper insights.
Anyway, his Dhamma Talks made me curious, so I visited their website. Among the many Dhamma Sermons there, one in particular caught my attention, it is entitled: “Is anicca impermanence?”.
As you might have guessed from the title, they question the conventional translation of anicca as impermanence or transience. Instead, in this lecture he interprets anicca as “manifestations”. This means that absolute truths come together to form a conventional truth. He gives the example of the word “On”, which is made up of the letters O and N. The word “On” has a conventional meaning, but consists of the letters O and N, which are, so to speak, absolute truths and know nothing of each other.
I’m really unsure what to make of it. He clearly states that he rejects the conventional interpretation of anicca as transience, but he doesn’t interpret it as the inability to keep what you like. Here is the link to this lecture, he explains the concept of anicca at 1:05:24
I would be very interested in your assessment of this. Anicca is such a fundamental and important concept, there should be no ambiguity about it.
Thank you all!
