matt lange:
It would be helpful if someone who know can tell me what term in Pali is commonly translated into "existence".
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my intention is to develop an understanding that is conducive toward arising of the path and the end of "my" dukkha (therefore, skillful descriptions and/or explanations).
I'm glad you are focused on the understanding that is helpful for actual practice (and not just dogma or strict translation).
Here's some thoughts:
The interpretation of the three marks of existence changes in subtly as we develop our practice, so let’s look at it sort of sequentially…
In terms of normal life: All of us want to survive, but we face changing situations and the inevitability of death. All of us want to always have good experiences, but our experiences either suck or are somehow incompletely satisfying. All of us want to be somebody that is praised and respected or be a nobody that no one blames or shames, but our sense of self depends on others. This is normal, conventional life.
Maybe we begin to see how our attitudes toward impermanence, suffering, and self makes our life more difficult. This is the beginning of a more spiritual and less material outlook on life. We start seeing that if we ignore these three aspects of experience, then our old psychological patterns keep repeating. In spiritual “code” we would say “samsara is characterized by the three marks of existence. samsara is the cycle of rebirth.” If we crack the code, then we would say “if we don’t notice how our personal experience of the world is changing, incomplete, and our sense of self can change, then we react to our emotions and thoughts as if they are “really real” and we wind up repeating our psychological patterns over and over again.”
So maybe we start a spiritual practice. The tricky thing is that many of our normal concerns get sort of carried into the way we think of spiritual practice. The classic way to fall into spiritual traps is to want a kind of spiritual permanence, spiritual bliss, and spiritual purity or oneness. Notice how this is just a fancy way to have a desire for survival, control, and being somebody/nobody.
Just to spell it all out:
material survival = spiritual permanence
material pleasure/control = spiritual bliss
material being somebody/nobody = spiritual purity/oneness
But thank goodness that there are spiritual practice that can cut at the root of material _and_ our somewhat immature spiritual desires -- and they lead to true freedom.
The way to work on the survival/permanence aspect is to forget about the future and pay attention to the NOW. The now is always available, regardless of what the future may hold. So mindfulness of the present moment is the antidote to all the concerns/worry about the future.
The way to work on a desire for pleasure/control/bliss is to LET things be as they are. The present moment is arising and passing on it’s own. So allowing anything to come up without preference – greed, aversion, or indifference --- positive, negative or neutral --- and to focus on simply being mindful of how they really are is the antidote to always seeking pleasure/control/bliss.
The way to work on a desire to be somebody/nobody/pure/one-with-everything is to notice the INTERDEPENDENCE of things. Noticing how everthing effects each other, noticing how all paired opposites (big-small, dirty-clean, etc.) define each other only by contrast rather than by ultimate meaning, noticing how wanting to be pure is paradoxically a form of ultimate hatred (of impurity), noticing how wanting to be one-with-everything is actually a kind of ultimate greed (wanting to own everything as self).
So spiritual practices of "now", "let", and "seeing interdependence" undercut our normal ways of clinging to survival, desires, and sense of independent self.
In the Mahayana they like to say that the three marks of existence are also the three gates to freedom:
* annica/impermanence becomes the freedom of reality having no fixed characteristics
* dukkha/suffering becomes the freedom from having having no fixed aspirations
* anatta/non-self becomes freedom of the "emptiness" of personal experience
Hope this helps in some way!
