Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

The Buddha taught that inside of all of us we have three
things that we would be better off without; three defilements
that exist in our minds and are the cause for all of our
suffering. In English, these are translated as greed, anger,
and delusion, as sort of approximate names for them. Greed
means any sort of partiality in favour of something, anger is
a name for any partiality against something, and delusion is
the misunderstanding that leads us to be partial towards or
against something.
These three mind states are the problem the Buddha’s
teaching attempts to address. They are a problem because,
as the Buddha pointed out, the nature of reality is that
nothing in the world can possibly satisfy us; clinging to
anything will only lead to suffering. Aversion towards
anything will likewise only result in stress, despair, and
suffering. There is nothing in the universe we could strive for
or against that would bring us peace, happiness and freedom
from suffering once it was obtained. Our beliefs to the
contrary are only due to delusion or misunderstanding.
The reason why no object of our experience can bring us true
happiness and peace is because there exists another set of
three realities that are present in every experience and
render all experience incapable of bringing satisfaction.
These three realities are impermanence, suffering and
non-self. Impermanence means instability, being subject to
change; suffering means being unable to satisfy; non-self
means being not subject to one’s control. These three things
are called the three universal characteristics and can be
verified through the correct practice of insight meditation.
Our partiality towards certain experiences is invariably due
to the belief that they carry the three opposite
characteristics: that they are stable, satisfying, and subject
to our control. We expect, hope, and strive to make our
experience conform to these expectations: stable, satisfying
and controllable. The reason why nothing in our experience
could ever bring us peace, happiness, and freedom from
suffering is that there is nothing in the universe that
possesses any of these three characteristics. This is where
all of our misunderstanding lies. When we talk about
delusion, the misunderstanding that leads to partiality, we
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