Tilakkhana · Pāli: tilakkhaṇa; Skt: trilakṣaṇa

The tilakkhaṇa are the three characteristics the tradition holds to mark existence: anicca (impermanence), dukkha (unsatisfactoriness) and anattā (non-self). The Dhammapada states them in three parallel verses (277 to 279). In the Pali they run “Sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā”, “Sabbe saṅkhārā dukkhā” and “Sabbe dhammā anattā”, which Bhikkhu Sujato translates “All conditions are impermanent”, “All conditions are suffering” and “All things are not-self”; Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu renders the first “All fabrications are inconstant”. Each verse closes the same way: “when this is seen with wisdom, one grows disillusioned with suffering: this is the path to purity”. The Pali edition even heads the three verses Aniccalakkhaṇavatthu, Dukkhalakkhaṇavatthu and Anattalakkhaṇavatthu, each naming a lakkhaṇa, a mark.

The third verse changes its noun. The first two speak of saṅkhārā, conditioned things; the third says dhammā, phenomena. How far that third word reaches is genuinely disputed: Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu notes that “The suttas are inconsistent on the question of whether Unbinding counts as a phenomenon (dhamma)”.

The three are not offered as the Buddha’s opinion but as how things stand. In the Dhamma-niyama Sutta (AN 3.134) he says that “whether or not there is the arising of Tathagatas, this property stands — this steadfastness of the Dhamma, this orderliness of the Dhamma: All processes are inconstant”, then repeats it for “All processes are stressful” and “All phenomena are not-self”. A Tathāgata “directly awakens to that, breaks through to that” and then “declares it, teaches it, describes it, sets it forth”. Seeing the three directly, rather than agreeing with them, is the work of insight meditation.