user151: I've seen teachers translate anicca as uncertainty. Is that a good translation? I mean, you can be certain when something is going to end. I'm just kind of trying to put these translations together and see if any intellectual insights are known by anyone. What about anatta with impermanence &/or uncertainty? One minute I am thinking that they go together and the next I'm thinking that they don't go together. It seems hard to see. Why is it hard for me to see? Am I trying to see intellectually in order to see experientially? What about all of the 3 characteristics &/or uncertainty?

user17652: It is not that everything is impermanent or permanent. What is generally understood as impermanence in the Buddhist context is the incessant need to find something reliable, long-lasting and substantial. Therefore, it is the behaviour that stems from the word impermanence rather than the word itself, or better still, it is the fallacious ideas we hold about a form-based pseudo-reality that can provide any sense of safety: the body is subject to the ravages of the world whether the self likes it or not. It is termed impermanence as a way to challenge these ideas and behaviours, but even the idea that things are impermanent must be let go at a certain point.
Those ideas and behaviours give rise to various degrees of suffering. The idea is that when one understands this, it is seen that there is no-self in any of it and that there never was.
Therefore, impermanence is an illusion we generate in the six sense field and comes directly from the idea that we exist as a central perceiver from the six sense organs, but it is helpful to frame it within an introspective context so that one can come to see that.
In summary, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness & not-self point to the immediate and direct experience that we construct inside the human condition, and how that experience is perpetually looping back onto itself for a remedy to the turmoil it generates. Since we have an intellect alongside a well-versed vocabulary and complex social needs, this perpetual self-referent need to find answers to the human condition looks rather sophisticated, when it is actually rather childlike - and I don't mean childlike in any derogatory fashion.
Impermanence, in the Buddhist context, will help you understand how uncertainty (a type of suffering) are actually very convincing illusory qualities stemming directly from a misperceived and mis-projected six sense experience.

151: <p>I've seen teachers translate anicca as uncertainty. Is that a good translation? I mean, you can be certain when something is going to end. I'm just kind of trying to put these translations together and see if any intellectual insights are known by anyone. What about anatta with impermanence &amp;/or uncertainty? One minute I am thinking that they go together and the next I'm thinking that they don't go together. It seems hard to see. Why is it hard for me to see? Am I trying to see intellectually in order to see experientially? What about all of the 3 characteristics &amp;/or uncertainty?</p>
 17652: <p>It is not that everything is impermanent or permanent. What is generally understood as <em>impermanence</em> in the Buddhist context is the incessant need to find something reliable, long-lasting and substantial. Therefore, it is the <em>behaviour</em> that stems from the word impermanence rather than the word itself, or better still, it is the fallacious ideas we hold about a form-based pseudo-reality that can provide any sense of safety: the body is subject to the ravages of the world whether the self likes it or not. It is termed <em>impermanence</em> as a way to challenge these ideas and behaviours, but even the idea that things are impermanent must be let go at a certain point.</p>
<p>Those ideas and behaviours give rise to various degrees of suffering. The idea is that when one understands this, it is seen that there is no-self in any of it and that there never was.</p>
<p>Therefore, impermanence is an illusion we generate in the six sense field and comes directly from the idea that we exist as a central perceiver from the six sense organs, but it is helpful to frame it within an introspective context so that one can come to see that.</p>
<p>In summary, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness &amp; not-self point to the <strong>immediate and direct experience</strong> that we construct inside the human condition, and how that experience is perpetually looping back onto itself for a remedy to the turmoil it generates. Since we have an intellect alongside a well-versed vocabulary and complex social needs, this perpetual self-referent need to find answers to the human condition looks rather sophisticated, when it is actually rather childlike - and I don't mean childlike in any derogatory fashion.</p>
<p>Impermanence, in the Buddhist context, will help you understand how uncertainty (a type of suffering) are actually very convincing illusory qualities stemming directly from a misperceived and mis-projected six sense experience.</p>
