The three marks of existence are the foundation the Buddha built his entire teaching on top of, and he stated the first one as plainly as possible. Everything you’re holding onto right now – a relationship, a job, a body that still works the way you expect it to – is already changing, whether you notice it or not. This isn’t a pessimistic observation. It’s a specific insight, and he laid it out in three linked verses rather than one.
“All conditioned things are impermanent – when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification.”
– Buddha, Dhammapada 277
The Three Marks of Existence, Not Just One Teaching
Dhammapada 277 doesn’t stand alone. It’s the first of three linked verses, each following the identical structure: all conditioned things are impermanent, all conditioned things are subject to suffering, all phenomena are without a fixed self. Together they’re known as the three marks of existence – not three separate teachings, but three ways of looking at the same fact from different angles. Impermanence is the one people notice first, because it’s the easiest to observe directly: the phone in your hand will break down eventually, the mood you’re in right now will pass, the argument that feels enormous today will be forgettable in a year.
Why Seeing This Clearly Ends Suffering Instead of Causing It
Most people already agree, in the abstract, that nothing lasts forever. That’s not controversial. What the Buddha pointed to was something more specific and more uncomfortable: suffering doesn’t come from things changing. It comes from expecting them not to. The verse doesn’t say impermanence causes suffering directly – it says seeing impermanence clearly, as one part of the three marks of existence, is what ends suffering, because clear sight removes the quiet assumption that this feeling, this relationship, this version of your life was supposed to hold still.
Where People Get This Wrong
The three marks of existence are sometimes mistaken for an argument against caring about anything, since nothing lasts anyway. That’s not what the teaching says. Nothing in the verses tells you to stop loving people, stop building things, or stop caring how your life goes. The instruction is narrower and more useful: notice the specific moment you start treating something temporary as if it were guaranteed, because that’s the exact moment suffering starts building a foundation under itself.
A relationship doesn’t hurt less because you accept it will eventually change in some way – through distance, disagreement, or simply time. But grief that arrives without the shock of betrayal is a different kind of grief than grief built on the belief that this was never supposed to happen at all.
What the Three Marks of Existence Look Like in an Ordinary Week
You don’t need a crisis to practice this. It shows up in far smaller moments: the frustration when a good mood doesn’t last, the disappointment when a productive streak breaks, the quiet panic when a skill you’d taken for granted turns out to need maintenance. In each case, the discomfort has two layers – the change itself, and the added weight of having expected it not to happen. The teaching only asks you to notice the second layer, since that’s the part actually within reach.
This is the three marks of existence at their most practical – not a philosophy to accept once, but something to notice fresh in each small moment where you’d otherwise expect things to hold still.
This same idea – that clinging to what’s already shifting is where suffering actually lives – runs through the teaching on why the giver receives more, which looks at the same mechanism from the angle of generosity instead of change.
Notice one thing today that you’re quietly expecting to stay the same. It won’t – and that’s not the problem. 🙏
Source: Dhammapada 277-279 · Pali Canon
Tags: three marks of existence buddhism explained, dhammapada 277 279 anicca dukkha anatta, buddha teaching on impermanence suffering non-self
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