anicca
Impermanence
[ uh-NEECH-cha ]
Seeing it in life
Anicca is the rising and falling nature of every dhamma; seeing it deeply is a gateway to liberation.
In short
All conditioned phenomena arise and pass away.
The analysis
Anicca is the simplest of the three characteristics to state and the hardest to actually see. Every conditioned phenomenon — every citta, every cetasika, every moment of rūpa — arises and passes, and this isn't a slow drift but a constant, moment-to-moment event happening far faster than ordinary attention registers. What gets called 'seeing anicca' in meditation isn't learning the fact (most people already believe things change) but directly perceiving the arising and passing at the level of present experience, which is different from knowing it as an idea.
Where it sits
Anicca is the first of the three characteristics (lakkhaṇa), and in a sense the doctrinal root of the other two: because things are impermanent, clinging to them produces dukkha, and because nothing persists unchanged, no fixed self (attā) can be found within the flux. Vipassanā meditation is often described simply as training to see anicca directly.
The bank balance that felt like a verdict on a Tuesday is a different number, felt differently, by Friday — not because the underlying situation necessarily resolved, but because the mind reading it is a different mind, moment to moment, and the reading itself was never as fixed as it felt.
Commonly mistaken for
Knowing intellectually that things change. The word points at something closer to perceptual — actually noticing arising and passing in real time, not holding the belief that change happens in general.
Only relevant to big life events. Anicca operates at the level of the mind-moment; it's as present in a single breath as in a decade.
Anicca Sutta (SN 22.12); Visuddhimagga XX.
Related terms