(Hillside Hermitage Talk no.108hh - edited transcript)
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“I have proclaimed to my disciples the way to understand thus : ‘This body of mine, made of material form, consisting of the four great elements, procreated by a mother and father, and built up out of boiled rice and porridge, is subject to change, to being worn and rubbed away, to dissolution and disintegration, and this consciousness of mine is supported by it and bound up with it.’ And thereby many disciples of mine abide having reached the consummation and perfection of direct knowledge.” - Mn77

Ajahn Nyanamoli: What is anicca?

Bhikkhu: My first translation would be “not permanent,” but that needs lots of qualification. Something that’s not permanent is of the nature to change, because something which is permanent doesn’t change.

Nm: Is such a thing conceivable?

B: A person could think it.

Nm: They can assume, yes. But if you were to stop and think about it, can you give an example of something that’s not subject to change?

B: No. But for instance, people might say, impermanence means everything’s changing. For them, that concept—everything’s changing—doesn’t change.

Nm: Yes. Which is why they’re not seeing impermanence.

B: The way I see it, anicca is this nature of change. The Buddha asks, Is matter, feeling, perception, the aggregates, the eye, the body—is that nicca or anicca? Is it permanent, as in it doesn’t change, or is it of the nature to change? The problem, as we’ve discussed, is that you have to be very careful about what we mean by change.

The Crucial Level of Sankharas

Nm: There’s a problem before that as well. It’s not that things are subject to change. That’s not the question the Buddha asks. It refers to the sankharas. Are sankharas impermanent? Are sankharas subjected to change? It refers to that which determines things.

B: Yes, things that you take to be yours, things that you are.

Nm: The Buddha’s statement is, sabbe sankhara anicca, not sabbe dhamma anicca. Sabbe sankhara anicca, sabbe sankhara dukkha. Sabbe dhamma anatta. If the starting point of a puthujjana (an ordinary person) is sabbe dhamma atta—”all things are me and myself”—then you imply a possibility of ownership, which implicitly contains a possibility of permanent satisfaction. With that as your starting attitude, you can’t understand anicca on an intellectual level because you don’t know where that level correctly is. You can collect information about it by reading suttas, but to understand anicca, it can only be understood on the level of the sankharas, not on the level of the dhammas (phenomena) that you regard as yours.

How do you then arrive at the level of sankharas? If you just attend to something and label it—oh, this is impermanent—that’s just another dhamma.

B: We were talking about that which determines your sense of self. Nm: Yes. The necessary basis for your sense of self, ownership, identity, actions, choices. That’s what impermanence is. Unless you’re seeing impermanence indirectly—on the necessary basis for this which I am attending to—you’re not seeing impermanence. You’re just pasting it over as an attitude that will cancel and deny everything, including any problem you might have.

You might say, Everything is impermanent, everything will come to pass, thus it doesn’t matter that I suffer right now. Well, it matters, otherwise you wouldn’t be going around saying, everything shall pass. Why do you care whether it passes or not?

B: Because you want your pain to go.

Nm: Exactly. That means you’re not seeing impermanence, because you’re looking at the wrong level—the level of things and observable phenomena. Impermanence can only be discerned peripherally, on the level of the basis that makes these things possible.

If I’m looking, hearing, liking, disliking, wanting more or less—where is impermanence in that experience?

The Body as the Primary Sankhara

B: Where are the sankharas in that experience? I’d say it’s at the level of the experience as a whole, peripherally.

Nm: They are indirect to the direction of attention. How would you describe them?

B: The unifying basis would be feeling. The present, enduring feeling that you are not the creator of can be a sankhara. Another palpable recognition of the level of sankharas is the body.

Nm: Exactly. Can you see, hear, taste, touch, or think if your body is not there alive on its own beforehand?

B: No.

Nm: When you see, you are focused on sight; when you hear, you are focused on sound. You fail to see the body because of which you can see and hear. Instead, you maintain the attitude that your eyes see by themselves, which is inconceivable even to an ordinary person if they stop to think.

Sankhara, that which is of the nature to change, is on a level you cannot directly attend to. You cannot observe it and say, Look, impermanent, because that projects it out there. If you understand impermanence on the right level, you cannot help but be affected emotionally. That’s why sabbe sankhara anicca leads to sabbe sankhara dukkha. All determinations are always unpleasant because they always remain subject to that nature of abrupt change.

B: They’ve been thrust upon you. You’ve been subjected to it.

Nm: You’re always secondary to them, contained within them. If you look for impermanence in the things you perceive, you won’t find it. That’s how people fall into the view that modern science, which says everything is changing, is what the Buddha meant. Does science make you a Sotapanna? Does it free you from suffering? Not even close.

The Coffin of Existence

This entire conversation, from your point of view, is fully enclosed within the necessary, enduring presence of your living body. If you start dying right now, the conversation, your thoughts—none of it can remain, because the necessary basis is removed. What is that necessary basis subject to?

B: I’ve been subjected to this body. I can only discern it as already enduring on its own, given to me.

Nm: Given to you. That’s the sense that things are for me. You wake up, and things are accessible, so you assume they are yours. What are the properties of having something given to you?

That it can be taken away. That you did not create it. That you had no say in its making.

B: All I can do is borrow it, make use of it. Just as its arising was abrupt, it can also be taken away.

Nm: Its nature remains outside of your control. Why? Because you haven’t created it. The only reason you maintain a sense of ownership is because you don’t dwell on the nature of the basis that is necessary for that ownership. Your self is fully enclosed within and dependent on this thing you had nothing to do with. You can see how gratuitous the sense of ownership is.

This whole existence is a project to keep you floating away from admitting this truth. If you sit with yourself without distraction, you eventually feel anxiety, then dukkha, from the recognition of being utterly without control. Any control you feel is secondary, enclosed by a vast non-control. It’s a recognition that while you’re alive, you’re actually buried alive. How would that feel? Imagine you have air to breathe in a coffin, but you are buried under kilometers of earth. You can’t get out.

B: Awful. Because you still want the control that feels like it has been taken away.

Nm: The dread you feel corresponds directly to the discrepancy created by your own assumption of being free. And that is the reality. As the Buddha said, four mountains are squeezing in on us, and it’s inconceivable that we can evade them. Your existence is like being in a coffin. You cannot conceive of an outside to this body, these senses, these thoughts. Yet you maintain the notion that you are the master.

This isn’t about denying your ability to act; it’s about putting it in perspective. No amount of control, possessions, or satisfaction can ever place you outside the senses, outside the given body—outside the coffin you’re buried in.

The Way Out is Not Out

Any thought about an outside of the body is still an experience within this body. For an Arahant, an enlightened being, what remains is name-and-form observed externally and this conscious body—the container. When this container breaks apart, that is nibbana. You are always in the same container of the five aggregates; that is the nature of rebirth.

The container that determines your life is not in your control. The sooner you stop expecting to step outside of it, the sooner you can practice the Dhamma correctly. The way out is not digging a tunnel, because there is no out. How can you dig a tunnel out of your own body? The way out is to stop being bothered emotionally, to stop resisting the discomfort of being subject to change. The way out is to understand dukkha.

B: Is the way out to stop wanting to get out?

Nm: Yes, if wanting to get out means craving against what is unpleasant. The desire to get out is the start, but the method is crucial. As the Buddha said, craving is abandoned by means of craving. It’s not about getting out, but about not being bothered in the slightest. You arrive at this through practices like mindfulness of death, which the Buddha said leads to complete dispassion. You are fully enclosed within that which is subject to disappear.

Craving: The fuel of Suffering

B: So, craving is wanting these things, which are by nature subject to change, to change.

Nm: Exactly. You want them to change because they have already changed and affected you. You have been bothered by a change that had nothing to do with you. By accepting their nature—which is to change—you stop wanting them to change, a desire that makes no sense. Yet that desire is the root of every action for an ignorant mind.

B: Action is wanting things to change.

Nm: Always. Why do you want them to change? Because they have already changed in a way you don’t like. If they change for the better, you want more change. If for the worse, you want a different change. Either way, you want on account of change. And what can you possibly want? Only another change. You suffer because of change, and to free yourself, you run straight back into change. That is the definition of being caught on a baited hook. The more you resist, the deeper the hook goes.

The only way to release yourself is to stop resisting on that peripheral level of the sankharas, the level of the given where you recognize you have no control. This means developing dispassion toward your own craving. The Buddha summarized this entire re-training of life as the Noble Eightfold Path. It all begins with Right View: a view free from Attavada, the deep-seated assumption of an external, independent self that exists outside the coffin of experience.