Week 4: Key Concepts in Early Buddhist Thought

Question 1

Impermanence

Answer 1

All things are impermanent and subject to change

Question 2

No-self

Answer 2

No fixed essence or substantial qualities –more like a process idea of self

Question 3

Interdependence (dependent co-origination)

Answer 3

sometimes called the “great chain of being” -a stream of creative processes in which nothing persists or
endures but is radically inter-dependent

Question 4

Three fundamental characteristics of existence

Answer 4

• Impermanent dynamic processes
• they have no “fixed” or substantial essence - they are always in flux
• They are radically interdependent

Question 5

The Three Marks of Existence

Answer 5

1. Anicca(Pali)/anitya (Sanskrit) – impermanence.
2. Dukkha (Pali)/Duhkha (Sanskrit) – suffering, unsatisfactoriness, stress, pain.
3. Anatta (Pali)/Anatman (Sanskrit) – selflessness, no-self.

The Buddha’s claim is: everything that exists necessarily has these attributes.

Question 6

Dependent co-origination & the twelve links

Answer 6

Used to understand how Causality operates - each link in the chain depends on a prior cause.

Buddhist account of the person’s journey through endless births/deaths/rebirths.

Also the Buddhist account of selflessness: nowhere in twelve links is there being. Only processes which arise, abide and cease.

It is also the Buddhist account of dukkha: the fact of this being an endless, circular process which always gives rise to the three forms of dukkha.

Question 7

Non-self

Answer 7

• Applies both to persons and objects – both lack an essential and unchanging essence.
• Buddhism does not deny that we have a self, or a series of temporary selves. Rather Buddhism claims that there is no permanent self.
• The self has no enduring essence – it is constantly in flux
• The self is a function of complex parts that has no existence beyond the parts: the skhandhas

Question 8

Selflessness and Dependent Origination

Answer 8

• The causal logic of dependent origination is: everything arises, abides and ceases, in dependence upon causes and conditions.
• Therefore, no thing exists as ‘its own thing’ independent of causes and conditions.
• So, selflessness really means: not having independence. Or: having inter-dependence.