The first of the Three Marks of Existence is anicca. Anicca is a Pali word that literally means inconstant or not continuous. The Buddha’s teaching of impermanence points toward the natural changing nature of everything. Nothing we experience is constant and unchanging. Whether it is a sound, physical sensation, thought, emotion, or something external, everything changes. This paragraph may seem redundant in its mentioning of change. It’s because it really is that important and simple: everything is changing.

Take the body, for example. It is constantly changing. Almost every cell in the body regenerates after a period, meaning that body your have today is not the same body you had ten years ago. Or, you may take a feeling of love you have for somebody. Whether it is a child, a parent, a friend, a pet, or a significant other, you may love another being deeply. Although your love may not wane, it changes. How you loved this being a year ago is not the same way in which you love the being today. The quality of the love changes. The feeling, thought patterns, and physical sensations change.

When we look at any of our experience we can see it changing, sometimes subtly. Maybe we have chronic pain in meditation practice. Tuning in to the experience, we see that the pain may have a natural moving quality. When we move or shift positions, the pain changes. This doesn’t mean the pain necessarily goes away, but the intricacies of the experience change. It’s easy to see how some things change, while it is difficult to see how other phenomena are impermanent. One helpful practice is to bring to mind something we consider permanent or unchanging and challenge ourselves to find the impermanence in it. In meditation, we don’t necessarily need to look directly for impermanence; if we are truly mindful, the impermanent nature becomes clear.