Lesson video

Hello, my name is Ms. Pauvaday.

Welcome back to the series on Buddhism.

Today we are going to be looking at three quite distinct ideas in Buddhism that underpin the best philosophy.

This is known as the three marks of existence and helps us to understand why this problem of illusion keeps coming up.

Why does illusion keep causing suffering all the time according to Buddhism.

So let's get ready.

Okay, so let's get ready for today's lesson.

Before we start let's just make sure that we're nice and ready.

So, go on pause while you collect these things, you're going to need a pen, some paper.

We need to make sure we are ready in a place that we can focus for our minds.

So making sure that all the distractions are just turned off, no TV.

If you're not using your phone for this lesson, just turn it off and go somewhere nice and quiet if you can.

I do need to tell you that today's lesson is going to include some kind of just, some discussions of death and suffering.

This is the nature of Ari.

I'm sure you've come across this already in your lessons.

So we are going to be talking about those things, but, if you need to do talk to a parent or a guardian afterwards, I think that's just a general good thing anyway.

And if you do feel a bit uncomfortable, then perhaps ask an adult to do the lesson with you and that's totally fine.

So go ahead and pause and get ready for the lesson.

Okay, so let's get ready.

So the first thing I want to ask you is what common experiences do all humans have? So what, can you think of something that every single human being on the planet will experience? So go and have, go ahead and pause for a moment.

Or if you're with someone you can have a little, you can discuss this for a moment or two.

What do you think? Okay, so hopefully you've had a moment to think about that.

Hopefully you've realised that, the very fact that we're here means that we needed some, we were born.

So that's a common experience to everyone and also death.

We, that's the great guarantee of life is that this is not going to last forever.

So birth and death, we can definitely guarantee that's going to happen.

But you might have said something like being thirsty or hungry as well.

Which is true because people obviously feel thirst or hunger.

You might've said something like love, or maybe education.

You might've come up with a huge range of ideas.

I'm sure you have, but what I want you to think about is all these common ideas is to all peoples across time, across different cultures, different genders, different sexualities.

That's what we call relative all the complete experiences that people have.

So for example, the idea of thirst and hunger.

There might be some differences there because someone who lives in a wealthy country, Britain is a, UK is a wealthy country.

We do obviously have some serious problems with some poverty unfortunately, sadly.

The are issues where we do have people who are not, who are hungry on the streets, what have you.

But it's when we kind of compare that to the poverty that you might find in rural China or India, for example, different countries in Africa.

Hunger and thirst might be quite different.

So it's relative to your experiences.

And you could say the same thing about love.

People have different ideas of love, love changes as well, different ideas of education, different experiences of education.

So they are genuinely common experiences, but actually they're quite different.

Whereas something like birth and death, those are pretty universal, I would say.

So there's a reason why I'm asking you is because it takes us to the three marks of existence.

In Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, they begin with the idea that human beings are not fully awake.

So if you think back to some of the previous lessons, the idea that we can't really or we're not really aware of the true nature of our being or the true nature of reality.

And in particular in Buddhism, with more of a focus in Buddhism, that illusion can be harmful and it can cause suffering.

And that you're going to find this thing coming up again and again and the genius of the Buddha was, he was able to understand how these illusions can actually really harm us and that's why there are, Buddhism has just grew and grew and grew and spread throughout the country, throughout the world really.

What happened was after the Buddha reached enlightenment, he went to Deer Park in Benares and he taught his first sermon.

And his first sermon was about Dhamma, the way out of this illusion.

Slightly different to the way that Hindus are going to understand Dhamma, that's a Sanskrit word.

Dhamma is the polyterm but for Buddhists this is the teachings.

Dhamma actually means lots of different things, but it's also used to mean the teachings of the Buddha.

And it's a way of illusion how to help people towards happiness and eventually for those people who really want to eventually to this mystical state known as enlightenment.

And these teachings can be found across all of his sermons, but there's a particular focus on these three ideas that causes illusion and that's known as the three marks of existing.

So what I'm going to ask you to do now, so we can start to understand what these marks of existence actually are.

Have a look at these pictures and have a moment to think which of these are permanent would you say? So go ahead and pause.

Have a good look, have a good think.

If there's someone with you, go ahead and chat with them.

It's always good to have a good discussion, which of these are permanent? Okay, so hopefully you've had a good think about this.

This is something again that I do, have to do with my students.

It always brings up some really interesting discussion and students are as usual really, they just come up with so many great ideas and I'm sure you've come up with some great ideas as well.

So, but I'm going to stick with these examples.

The sun, so I've used these examples because these are the ones that come up quite a lot in my classes.

So often comes up the sun, but we have to remember the sun We are tiny in comparison to the sun and our existence has been minuscule compared to how long the sun has existed and how long it will exist.

It will eventually die, so it's not permanent.

We might think about things like fact, so Rome is the capital of Italy.

It's capital city of Italy, but facts also can change.

They've got a shelf line because things do change over time.

It used to be Turin, Turin was the capital of Italy.

So Rome hasn't always been the capital of Italy.

We might think about laws, so laws, because they govern people, we might think, well, actually people are the same therefore they stay the same.

But, again if we look at history things have changed.

Laws have had to be updated.

Things like technology.

We have data protection laws now because of technology.

But even when it comes to our ideas about people, some of you from your history lessons might know about Jim Crow laws, which were laws that were in America, in the States specifically designed to oppress and disadvantage the black people of America.

And that would be things like black people were not allowed to go to school or use certain shops or restaurants, that kind of thing and those laws necessarily had to change as people became aware that, racial prejudice and slavery, all those kinds of things were wrong.

And you could say the same thing about sexuality, homosexuality laws.

It's not that long ago in this country where homosexuality was considered a crime.

Those laws needed to be updated so these are not permanent.

With time now, I love that people bring this up.

Time, we tend to think that time is a constant.

But if we look at Einstein's theory, so little bit of physics for you here, time is relative.

So according to Einstein's theory, time is not constant.

What happens is it bends around the mass, physical objects in that space and therefore it changes.

So we have a certain way of looking at time in this environment but those of you who like Sci-Fi films and books, I'm a big fan.

What you might often see, the classic example is the astronauts.

They leave the planets and they're looking for another planet for us to live on in or that kind of thing.

And there's a time discrepancy.

So the astronauts leaves the people, their loved ones behind.

Usually it's a small child and they go off and by the time they come back, they've only aged maybe a year or so, but the child is now in their nineties or something like that, because time is different in different places.

So therefore time is not permanent.

It doesn't stay exactly the same.

My challenge to you is can you think of a concept or something that is permanent? Can we think of anything that's permanent? Okay and I'm sure some of you thought of this.

Definitely students come up with this idea in my class that the concept of change so if we think about time, time is a concept that's constantly changing or the sun is something that exists, but then it doesn't exist.

But what we can say is it's changing.

So we can kind of argue that change is something that is permanent, but that thing in itself is changing.

So strictly speaking, we can't say that anything permanently exists.

It's very difficult to say so.

And that brings us to the first mark of existence, Anicca.

Which means impermanence, that's what it means.

Buddhists see this as a problem, because what happens is we tend to think that, we tend to live in this worlds where all these ideas that we think things are going to stay the same.

We have believed this illusion of permanence, but that can lead us astray it can actually cause us to suffer.

And we'll look at this a bit later on.

Okay, the next one I'm going to ask you to look at never strange, philosophical puzzle for you is which of these would you say is a car? So go ahead, have a look.

Have a look at the pictures, which one would you say is a car and why? Discuss it with somebody if you can, if not have good thinking in your mind.

You might not be able to see the bottom picture, but what you can see is the car inside a McDonald's restaurant, which is, I think it's a table for people to sit at.

So which of these are a car? Have a pause, have a think and then unpause when you're ready.

Okay, so you might've had a good think about that.

I'm just going to move my face over here onto the McDonald's car, yeah, I'm going to move myself here.

So you might be thinking, okay, this must be a car because it has wheels.

Therefore that's what it means, you're thinking about its function.

A car is something that takes us somewhere.

And in order for it to do that, it needs to have wheels.

When we look at the barrel car, we think, okay again, that's its function so therefore it can still transform, sorry transport people even though it's made out of a barrel, I don't know if you can see that, but it has been made out of a barrel.

So, and you might look at the picture which has lots of different parts.

So you might then define a car by its different parts and think, okay, that's what makes up a car.

Or you might think, okay, then the car in McDonald's, that's still a car, just by the shape of it, because it has the shape of a car.

That car in McDonald's is not a functioning car, but it has a shape and it's used for something else.

Now, the reason I'm asking you this, and again these are the kind of philosophical questions that we ask ourselves to kind of point out the problems that we have in the world.

How do we define things? Do we define things by their shape, by their, what they actually do, by their function? Or do we define them by the different parts that make it, how do we work all of this out? And what the Buddha did was he kind of applied this idea to a human being.

So we can think of it from the perspective as a human being or you, what makes you, you? And I often ask my students is, what makes you, you? And are you still the same you from five years ago? And will you be the same you in 10 years? Are you exactly the same? And if you're saying, well actually, I'm different and I might be a different person or these kinds of ideas, then this creates a problem in terms of what we think you or a person is.

It starts to cause problems in a way.

And the reason why is this concept? So we're going to look at this concept called Annata.

I've just flipped, got very, very eager and flicked ahead.

So, Anatta means no self.

In Western philosophy we have this idea of mind and body is separate and the mind is something separate and therefore, it's almost like a constant thing that is constant, but it's kind of changing at the same time.

It's a permanent thing.

So you might have the idea of like a permanent soul or a permanent sense of being who I am.

In Western philosophy is known as the Cogito, that the I, the self.

But in Buddhist philosophy, that self, that thing that we think is me or you is an illusion.

And it's an illusion because of this idea of non permanence, that nothing can exist permanently.

And the Buddha came to that note, just kind of, according to the tradition, not because he thought it was a good idea, but it's because he experienced it in deep meditation when he became enlightened.

He had the deepest experiences of reality.

He experienced that the self doesn't exist, but what it is, is a collection and a constant stream of ideas, impulses, behaviours, feelings that are constantly changing, constantly, constantly and constantly changing.

And what happens is, we put all these mental constructs together and they get mistaken as the self.

That's what Buddhism teaches.

Slightly different in Hinduism, definitely different in Western philosophy.

So again, this is the second mark of existence Anatta, the self, the permanent self doesn't exist.

Everyone is constantly changing.

And if you think about modern psychology is kind of taking on this idea.

I think I mentioned in other lessons that Buddhist psychology is like this growing field in psychology.

And it's kind of showing that personality is this collection of constructs in the mind, which are constantly changing.

And on a physical level if you look at the human body, cellular regeneration, your body will completely rejuvenate and change every single cell in your body after seven or 10 years.

So physically you are completely different as well after seven or 10 years.

So from a philosophical perspective, it starts to become problematic.

What do we mean by a person, especially when they're constantly changing.

It's important to know, Buddhist is not trying to deny your identity or the feeling that you are a person.

All they're saying is, it's just not permanent and it will change so don't be sad when that happens because it's just, that's just life.

That's just the way it is.

Okay, so let's have a look at the next one, which is known as Dukka.

And you are definitely going to learn this term because it just comes up again and again and again.

And there's a reason why, because it does underpin a lot of the Buddhist philosophy.

So have a look at this, are these people in pain? Again, have a good look at each picture and think, are they in pain? Because the Buddha is saying that no self, impermanence, these ideas cause sufferings.

Have look at these.

I'm just going to move myself again, over here.

So being in love, really wonderful thing.

We all try to aspire to that and, but we, I mean, it happens in various forms. So there's lots of different types of love and it's a wonderful thing, but, and we think that's a really positive thing.

But what happens is we start to kind of crave the early stages of love or we crave different types of love.

And that can cause a lot of suffering.

Love changes over time.

And also we can become attached to the people that we love.

So that's why death is an obvious form of suffering because we want the people that we love to be around us forever.

Even though we know, and we know it's not going to last.

So we suffer because of that.

So something as wonderful as love can then become something quite painful.

Then the Buddha is not saying this is a bad thing.

Again, it's just about being aware that this is the nature of reality.

This is just the nature of things.

And therefore, we need to appreciate those things whilst we have them.

Ice cream, food, I'm terrible for food.

I'm constantly thinking about food and once I've eaten something, then on my mind is going and I'm thinking, what else do I want to eat? Again it can cause suffering because there's something that I desire.

Really, in fact when I was making these slides, I think I was really snacking.

'Cause I was looking at those are pictures of ice cream.

It was just creating all this desire or craving inside of me.

And even if I had it, even if I had an ice cream, how long was I satisfied for? five minutes, ten minutes? And then the next desire come.

So either you want it and then you're satisfied, you want it and you get it, and you're satisfied or you don't get it and you're not satisfied.

But if you want it and you get it and you're satisfied, 10 minutes later, an hour later, you're going to want something else.

So desire is a bit of a problem.

And you're going to see the concept of desire come up again.

And things like, your work or retirement particularly people choose careers when they're in their early twenties.

And they might have changed by that point.

10 years down the line, they might be completely different people.

They might be thinking, actually, this isn't the job for me.

I don't want to be in this career or conversing in the opposite direction people who've worked for a very, very long time in a particular field when they retired, they don't quite know who they are because they've been doing the same job for so long.

And it's part of their identity, their social group, and they've kind of lost themselves.

So all of these things can lead to suffering according to Buddhists.

So why I'm talking about this? What's it got to do with anything.

The Buddha showed how these ideas interact so the illusion of permanence makes us not face up to the reality of what we all know is coming, change is coming.

So I know that I am not going to stay this age forever.

I know that I'm not going to be satisfied in my job forever.

I know that the people that I love are not going to be around forever.

But we don't quite prepare ourselves for that.

So when change happens, it can cause suffering and people aren't great at change.

It can be quite harsh for some people, can't really cope with it.

So something as simple as changing schools, I'm sure you were, some of you were slightly anxious when you went from primary school to secondary school.

That can cause some issues of suffering.

If you fall out with your friends that, we know conflict happens, again that can cause suffering or having a new boss so all these things can, not being prepared for change can lead to suffering.

And the illusion of the self can keep us boxed in it can, some people, they cling to these ideas that are no longer fit for purpose.

So we can look at the idea of, the kind of laws against homosexuality.

Those ideas became obsolete because we just don't live in that society anymore.

But some people do might cling on to certain ideas, even on a personal level, they might think, okay, I'm, I don't know, I live in this house and I'm never leaving here even if it's not fit for purpose, the house too big, could cause people to cling to negative behaviours like addiction, for example, not feeling that they can never come out of these addictions.

And it might cause people to cling to familiar things rather than what's good for us.

So a classic example is, I've got a couple of friends who are just are not happy in their jobs, but they don't want to move because they know their jobs, they know how to do it, they know how to get to their offices.

But they're actually not very happy, but they'd rather choose familiarity because it's easier.

All of these things and these illusions can cause suffering according to Buddhism.

So, okay I have talked to you for quite a bit now.

So have a look at this question.

I'm just going to move myself over here.

And this is your tasks.

So what I want you to do is I want you to think of things that can cause humans the most pain, and I want you to try and link it to Anicca and Anatta and Dukka is suffering so that's going to be part of it already.

And in the highlighted support box, I've suggested, a probably good way to do this is to start with the problem.

So something like, I don't know, death is a good example.

Start with that and then move your way backwards and think like what's the problem? What is the cause? And finally, how does it link to Anicca and Anatta? If you can create a diagram and label it with the polyterms of Anicca, Anatta and Dukka with a description of the of the English terminology.

Then that would be really useful for you to kind of remember how this all fits together.

So well done for another great lesson.

I'm sure you did really, really well.

Some tricky concepts, but I'm sure you nailed them.

So what I'd like you to do now is two things.

Go ahead and finish the summary quiz.

And secondly, go and find someone, go and explain to them what you've learned and use the terms Anicca Anatta and Dukka.

It's a good way to keep remembering these terms because they come up quite a lot and I will see you next time.