Seeing the 3Cs Clearly

Oof, the big question, really. I could go into a few ways at looking at it, here’s how I do it in my Vipashyana practice, and this is how I generally guide people in seeing the 3Cs clearly, progressing from stage to stage. My perspective is that Emptiness is the king insight that binds the rest together. But impermanence is the workhorse insight. Suffering insight is the toughest pill to swallow.

With that being said, here’s my little crash course on seeing the 3Cs clearly and unequivocally:

1. Impermanence

• Shallow view: notice how things are transitory. Life lasts a short time. Pleasant and unpleasant moods or emotions are over eventually. Nothing really lasts forever.
• Deeper view: notice how fragile our perspective is in time. The very moment, now, as it is, is so hard to grasp. By the time you’re grasping the beginning of this moment, the end is already here. Time is so slippery. Our mind is constantly constructing “the moment” out of fragments of sensations as they appear, kind of strobing into and out of existence. By seeing this occurring, we can investigate how impermanent everything really is. Nothing lasts at all. No sensation lasts. The beginning of the end is already here. The end of the beginning is already begun. Etc.

2. Suffering

• Shallow view: every sensation is kind of a bummer. We experience pleasure, but soon enough it’s gone, and we’re sad. Or we experience pain, and that makes us feel like crap too. It’s just an inescapable merry-go-round of pleasure-pain-pleasure-pain, nonstop. As soon as I get what I want, I’ll want more. But if I didn’t get it, to begin with, I’m gonna whine all day! There’s just no deep core universal all-applicable satisfaction to be found, no universal ointment to soothe this deep itch in my psyche that’s crying out for comfort!
• Deeper view: suffering is cultivated through the view of sensations and how they present themselves. Knowing the “how” of their presentation is important. What is it really about pain that causes suffering? Try and split them apart, can you notice the suffering “there” and the pain as being “here” (or vice versa)? Our minds are conditioned to expect suffering based on time, conditionality-causality, and pain. Look at how time creates suffering; no sensation lasts even for an assumed amount of time. Look at how pain causes suffering; we believe the pain is more than the pain, and so we struggle against it rather than accepting the pain as it is. Look at how conditionality-causality causes suffering; we are the victims of our thinking, we think just because we do X, that we’ll get Y. This is not the case, there are causes and conditions outside of us that our minds refuse to accept. Learn these sources of suffering intimately so you can be free of them.

3. Emptiness / No-self

• Shallow view: nothing is really in your control. You cannot be your mind, because if you were your mind you could focus on this breath without distraction forever. You are not your body, because if you were your body you could grow your hair at will, stop aches and pains at will, grow taller, shrink, change your appearance, etc. But you cannot, so “you” cannot be either your mind and body. Know this intimately by exploring the mind, and watching how the mind works. Notice the things that draw attention away from focus, what are they about? What is this mind really doing in these moments?
• Deeper view: no sensation is made of itself. A chair is not made of chair, we know this, it makes sense. Explore an emotion or pain sensation. Notice how the sensations of pain in your butt aren’t actually made of butt pain; there’s some pressure here, some tingling there, maybe some other sensations rippling out, but there’s no “core” place to find the pain. There’s simply no pain to be found in the sensations making up pain. But now you go to the sensation of selfhood. Selfhood has many sensations that make it up, yet no one sensation is you. They’re all fluxing and doing their own thing. Notice this intimately. Similar to pain, you may find sensations of thinking, planning, emoting, remembering, noticing, attending, abiding, relaxing, agitation, etc. but none of these things are you, they cannot be you. How do you know this? Because yesterday you were not angry, yet you were still conventionally you. Today you are angry, and yet there is a conventional feeling that you still exist. Notice this tension intimately and progressively disidentify with any sensation that could possibly be felt to be yours, under your control, a core, an essence, a stable identity, etc. and accept them all as the vast kaleidoscopic manifestation of your selfhood at any one moment. Notice how the mind, jumps out of this raw potential to make itself moment to moment, “I am X” and now “I am Y”. These are not problems, the self is not a problem, you do exist. But the way you think you exist is the problem. Combine this with the insight of impermanence to go deeper still on this insight.
• Deeper view 2: notice the mind and its inherent emptiness. How does it present itself? How does the mind create reality? Notice, that as soon as reality is encountered, that the mind instantly sets itself apart from it. However, there is a tension here; mind creates the reality that it sees, and yet, the mind is part of the very reality that supports its creation to begin with. Where does that leave the mind and its belief of being unique and independent of reality? What does this say about how we conceive of reality? What does this say about the thoughts of “mind = inside” and “reality = outside”? Notice this tension in the inherent belief system of the mind and realise the games the mind plays in convincing itself that it is fully real, separate, and abides against the rules of reality. Notice how when the mind realises impermanence, suffering, and emptiness, that these characteristics are also fundamental characteristics of the universe itself, as the mind itself is part of the universe.
• Deeper view 3: If no sensation is made of itself, as the definition of emptiness states, that means emptiness itself is also empty. Notice how in the noticing of emptiness, there is no tangible emptiness to be seen other than in the object as it is presented in relation to the characteristic.

Where does the observation happen and the concordant changes in perspective happen… Well, if we take the insights to their radical conclusion, where do you think it happens!? I’ll leave for you to decide after you’ve completed the path… The answer changes a lot while exploring these characteristics, and it all becomes very amusing near the end! :)

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions, I’d love to refine my expression of these ideas better, so please challenge me if you wish! :)