Reply To: Compilation of my thoughts

#51505
TripleGemStudent
Participant

May you Pathfinder and all of us living beings be well. 

“I think it can be helpful to think of anicca with respect to clinging/ panca upadana khandaon top of how things are conditioned”. 

 “If we take anicca to be “not icca/ not to our liking”, then it implies that we have icca for it in the first place”

I completely agree that it’s helpful and I’ll add “needed” to think of anicca in relation to the clinging / pancaupadanakkhanda. Definitely beneficial, lots to observe, learn and realize from this teaching. Before last year, I feel most of what I learned and understood over the years in regards to anicca was in respect to pancaupadanakkhanda. But recently something that really helped me to further my understanding of anicca and one of the most simple example I can think of to share what helped me is be based on some modification of your words “I think it can be helpful to think of anicca with respect to how things are conditioned on top of the pancaupadanakkhanda”. The conditioning here I’m talking about isn’t just about the akusala-mula being initiated or with some form of attachment, but relating to all of our experiences / phenomenon. This is my understanding, as long as one is a satta anywhere in the 31 realms, anicca takes effect regardless if one has icca / attachments (tanha, asava’s, anusaya’s) or not, even the Noble 8 Fold Path itself is anicca. 

“the puddle of water does not cause dukkha to us, then it would not be anicca too by the logical statement”.

I believe to understand your logical / reasoning, to me the puddle of water or our experiencing of it is anicca itself and like you said “Since anicca, dukkha, and anatta are linked (Yadaniccaṁ taṁ dukkhaṁ, yaṁ dukkhaṁ tadanattā – whatever is anicca is dukkha, whatever is dukkha is anatta)”. Since I said our experiencing of the puddle of water is anicca itself, then that means dukkha and anatta follow. My understanding of dukkha doesn’t necessarily just mean “suffering”, but can mean different things depending on the context. Regardless whether the puddle of water cause us dukkha (based on attachment) or not, it would still be considered dukkha to me. If one is not attached to the experience / phenomenon even with right view, I would still consider that as dukkha as well since it’s anicca, but not the dukkha that comes with attachment or the akusala-mula P.S.  

“and not that every single thing is anicca”. 

If I may ask, based on Paramattha Sacca (4 ultimate truths) rupa, citta, cetasika and nibbana. Besides nibbana, which of rupa, citta or cetasika is not anicca? 

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