Twelve Marks of Impermanence
Practitioners contemplate the truth of suffering through four shared marks: impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and selflessness. This part takes up the first and most extensively developed: twelve distinct marks of impermanence, ranging from the bare, ever-present absence of a self through the periodic destruction of entire world-systems by fire, water, and wind.
1. Four Shared Marks, and Impermanence Named Twelve Ways
云何苦諦共相？謂無常相、苦相、空相、無我相。何等無常相？略有十二，謂非有相、壞滅相、變異相、別離相、現前相、法爾相、剎那相、相續相、病等相、種種心行轉相、資產興衰相、器世成壞相。
What are the truth of suffering's shared marks? The mark of impermanence, the mark of suffering, the mark of emptiness, and the mark of selflessness. What is the mark of impermanence? Briefly, twelve: the mark of non-existence, the mark of destruction, the mark of alteration, the mark of separation, the mark of present occurrence, the mark of what is simply so by nature, the mark of momentariness, the mark of continuity, the mark of sickness and the like, the mark of the mind's own shifting activity, the mark of possessions rising and falling, and the mark of the container world's own formation and destruction.
2. The First Eight Marks
何等非有相？謂蘊界處於一切時，我我所性常非有故。云何名為觸對變壞？謂由手足塊石刀杖寒熱飢渴蚊虻蛇蠍所觸對時即便變壞。云何名為方所示現？謂由方所可相，示現如此如此色、如是如是色；或由定心、或由不定尋思相應種種搆畫。何等壞滅相？謂諸行生已即滅，暫有還無故。何等變異相？謂諸行異生，由不相似相續轉故。
What is the mark of non-existence? That the aggregates, elements, and sense fields, at every single time, are never actually possessed of a self or of what belongs to a self. What is the mark of destruction? That formations, once arisen, immediately cease — present for a moment, then gone. What is the mark of alteration? That formations undergo change from one moment to the next, continuing on in a dissimilar succession rather than remaining identical.
何等別離相？謂於諸行失增上力，或他所攝執為己有。何等現前相？謂正處無常，由因隨逐今受無常故。何等法爾相？謂當來無常，由因隨逐定當受故。何等剎那相？謂諸行剎那，後必不住故。何等相續相？謂無始時來諸行生滅相續不斷故。何等病等相？謂四大時分受命變異故。
What is the mark of separation? That one loses one's own dominant power over formations, or that another lays claim to them as their own. What is the mark of present occurrence? That impermanence is presently, actually being undergone, drawn along by its own cause right now. What is the mark of what is simply so by nature? That future impermanence, likewise drawn along by its own cause, is bound to be undergone without fail. What is the mark of momentariness? That formations, in a single instant, are certain not to remain even a moment longer. What is the mark of continuity? That formations have arisen and ceased in unbroken succession since beginningless time. What is the mark of sickness and the like? That the four great elements, and the span of one's own allotted time, undergo alteration.
T1606 sharpens several of these against a natural misunderstanding. "Non-existence" does not mean the aggregates themselves fail to exist — it means, specifically, that the self and what-belongs-to-a-self one might expect to find running through them are never actually present there, at any time. "Present occurrence" and "what is simply so by nature" form a deliberate pair: the former names impermanence already actively unfolding right now, the latter names impermanence's own guaranteed future arrival, drawn along by the very same causal thread — death, on this analysis, is not a possibility that might or might not occur, but something already, in a real sense, underway from the moment of birth. And "continuity," unlike "momentariness," deliberately zooms out from any single instant to the entire beginningless chain of such instants, one feeding into the next without a single genuine gap since time out of mind.
3. The Final Four Marks
何等種種心行轉相？謂於一時起有貪心、或於一時起離貪心，如是有瞋離瞋、有癡離癡、若合若散、若下若舉、若掉離掉、若不寂靜若寂靜、若定不定，如是等心行流轉故。何等資產興衰相？謂諸興善終歸衰變故。
What is the mark of the mind's own shifting activity? That at one moment a craving mind arises, and at another moment a mind free of craving; likewise a mind of hatred or free of it, of delusion or free of it; gathered together or scattered apart; sunken low or lifted high; agitated or free of agitation; unsettled or settled; concentrated or unconcentrated — the mind's own activity ceaselessly shifting in just this way.
What is the mark of possessions rising and falling? That every flourishing, wholesome state eventually comes round to decline.
何等器世成壞相？謂火水風三種成壞，有三災，頂謂第二第三第四靜慮。第四靜慮外宮殿等，雖無外災成壞，然彼諸天與宮殿等俱生俱滅，說有成壞。復有三種中劫，所謂飢饉、疫病、刀兵。此小三災，劫究竟位方乃出現。謂世界成已，一中劫初唯減、一中劫後唯增，十八中劫亦增亦減，二十中劫世界正壞，二十中劫世界壞已住，二十中劫世界正成，二十中劫世界成已住。合此八十中劫為一大劫，由此劫數顯色無色界諸天壽量，如說以壽盡故、福盡故、業盡故，彼彼有情從彼彼處沒。云何壽盡？謂時死。云何福盡？謂非時死，即非福死。以彼有情貪著定味，福力減盡因此命終。云何業盡？謂順生受業、順後受業俱盡故死。
What is the mark of the container world's own formation and destruction? The three great calamities of fire, water, and wind — each with its own uppermost limit at the Second, Third, and Fourth Dhyāna respectively. Beyond the Fourth Dhyāna, though the palaces there suffer no external calamity of formation and destruction, the gods dwelling there and their palaces still arise and cease together, and so are still said to undergo formation and destruction.
There are, further, three lesser calamities within a medium kalpa — famine, plague, and warfare — which appear only once a kalpa nears its close. Once a world-system has formed, one medium kalpa passes in pure decline, one final medium kalpa passes in pure increase, and eighteen medium kalpas in between alternate between increase and decline. Twenty medium kalpas pass in the world's actual destruction, twenty in its abiding once destroyed, twenty in its actual formation, and twenty in its abiding once formed. These eighty medium kalpas together make one great kalpa, and it is by this count of kalpas that the lifespans of the gods in the form and formless realms are measured — as it is said, sentient beings pass away from wherever they are through the exhaustion of lifespan, of merit, or of karma. What is the exhaustion of lifespan? Death that comes exactly on schedule. What is the exhaustion of merit? Death that comes before its scheduled time — being attached to the mere savor of concentration, one's merit-power is depleted, and one's life ends on this account. What is the exhaustion of karma? Death that comes because the karma ripening in this present life and the karma ripening in the immediately following life are both simultaneously exhausted.
This cosmological account of the kalpa cycle matches, term for term, the same eighty-medium-kalpa structure and three great calamities already given in full on this site's Abhidharmakośa pages — again, both texts drawing on the same shared classical scheme. What is distinctive here is the framing: this entire elaborate cosmology of world-destruction is presented specifically as one of twelve marks of impermanence to be directly contemplated, not merely as background cosmological information. The three modes of death that close this section — exhaustion of lifespan, of merit, and of karma — extend the same lesson from the scale of entire world-systems down to a single meditator's own life: even a god who has attained the most exalted concentration can still die "before their time" simply through becoming complacently attached to that very attainment's pleasant savor, which is itself a striking, cautionary instance of impermanence operating at the very summit of what unliberated existence can achieve.
Part 28 Complete
The twelve marks of impermanence are now fully examined, from the bare absence of a self through the mind's own moment-to-moment shifting to the periodic destruction of entire world-systems. Part 29 turns to the remaining three shared marks — suffering (already largely covered), emptiness, and selflessness — including the treatise's own threefold analysis of emptiness matched to the three natures.
Continue to Part 29 — Suffering, Emptiness, and Selflessness →