In the Chinese Buddhist context, *常* (nitya) is not a single-dimensional term but a "cognitive spectrum" running through the entire path of liberation. Without clarifying its different levels, practitioners easily oscillate between clinging to permanence and falling into nihilism.
According to classical texts, "permanence" (常) comprises four distinct yet progressively deepening dimensions:
1. The False Permanence of Ordinary People and Non-Buddhists (Permanence as Deluded Attachment): * The conventional permanence of ordinary people: Worldlings regard the relative stability of worldly phenomena as "permanence"—e.g., "a seed sprouts and bears fruit," "gold ore is refined into gold." This is merely an empirical generalization under conventional language (世俗谛, saṃvṛti-satya, conventional truth). * The causally conditioned false permanence and speculative reasoning of non-Buddhists: Non-Buddhists seek an eternal, imperishable absolute sovereign (such as "Great Brahmā" or "the Self," ātman), or hold that karma-retribution, memory, and reckoning are permanent. This kind of "permanence" is a conclusion inferred through intellectual speculation after observing the arising and ceasing of the world—like a "rabbit's horn," it exists only as conceptual designation, with no actual entity. * Deluded clinging within non-Buddhist meditative states: Some practitioners, having gained recollection of past lives or deep memory in meditation, can recall the evolution of the world through twenty, forty, or even eighty cycles of cosmic formation and dissolution. Because they have witnessed extremely long cycles, they proclaim in their meditative state, based on limited cognition, that "the world is eternally existing." The Buddha points out that this is merely a "deluded clinging born of ignorance, seeing only morning and evening" (朝暮无智妄执), arising because their wisdom is limited and they have not seen the ultimate.
2. The Invariable Law of the Buddhas' Manifestation (Permanence as Phenomenal Regularity): In the *長阿含經* (Dīrghāgama), "permanence" is expressed as "the constant Dharma of the Buddhas" (諸佛常法). This refers to the sacred physical and spiritual laws that all Buddhas of the ten directions and three times necessarily follow in the phenomenal aspects of their descent into the world, their practice, and their manifestation of awakening. For example: the bodhisattva enters the womb and is born from the right side, with right mindfulness unperturbed; at entering and leaving the womb, the great earth trembles and a great light shines; after birth, without support, the infant walks seven steps, surveys the four directions, and declares, "In heaven above and earth below, I alone am the Honored One; I shall deliver all beings from birth, aging, sickness, and death". This does not refer to the eternity of any physical thing, but to the necessity and sacred stability of the law of "Buddha-manifestation" itself.
3. The "True Permanence" (真常) of the Tathāgata, Buddha-Nature, and Nirvāṇa (Reality Transcending Worldly Arising and Ceasing): In the *大般涅槃經* (Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra) and the *楞伽經* (Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra), the Buddha reveals the core teaching on "permanence": * Nirvāṇa is not "nonexistent before, now existing": The essence of nirvāṇa is "permanently abiding in nature and characteristics." It is not a result "created" through practice, but something originally present, merely obscured by the clouds of affliction; once afflictions are removed, the awakened nature manifests and can be seen. * Buddha-nature (佛性, buddhatā) is unconditioned and permanent: Buddha-nature is unborn and unceasing, neither coming nor going, not produced by causes, not dependent on any condition—it belongs to the "unconditioned dharmas" (無為法, asaṃskṛta-dharma), and is therefore called permanent (常). Although sentient beings abide in affliction, because they are originally endowed with awakened nature, they too are called permanent. * The wisdom obtained without interruption is permanent: The unsurpassed wisdom (prajñā) obtained by the Tathāgata is not produced by deluded discrimination but is the direct, such-like illumination of dharma-nature. Therefore, "the wisdom obtained without interruption is permanent; hence the Tathāgata is permanent". Here the Mahāyāna teaching ascends from the emphasis on "impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and selflessness" at Deer Park to the ultimate truth of "permanence, bliss, self, and purity" (常樂我淨) at Kuśinagara.
4. Neither Permanent nor Impermanent (The Middle Way and the Cessation of Speech): At the highest level of meaning, the *楞伽經* reveals the ultimate transcendence of "permanence": if one says the Tathāgata is "permanent," one easily falls into the non-Buddhist view of a "Self/sovereign"; if one says the Tathāgata is "impermanent," the Tathāgata becomes a conditioned, destructible thing like a jar or clothing. Therefore, the Tathāgata is "neither permanent nor impermanent". From the perspective that "characteristics arise from non-arising nature" (相起無生性), the very moment of arising-and-ceasing is itself non-arising, hence it is said that "impermanence itself is permanence" (無常常). In the eyes of the awakened, "permanence" and "impermanence" are a pair of mutually dependent relative concepts (二法, two dharmas). Only by departing from all verbal discrimination, and forever leaving behind the conceptual proliferations (戲論, prapañca) of permanence and impermanence, does one attain true stillness.
A Practical Check in Daily Life
In today's high-paced contemporary life, we engage with the concept of "permanence" every minute—yet most people mistake "false permanence" for "true permanence," thereby falling into tremendous anxiety and suffering.
Scenario One: Career and Financial Security (Mistaking "Conditioned Arising and Ceasing" for "Conventional Permanence") * Life Situation: You work at a high-tech company, earn a good salary, have bought a house, and invested in funds. Subconsciously you have established a belief: "As long as I work hard and manage money rationally, my quality of life will steadily improve; this lifestyle is sustainable." * Classical Mapping and Clarification: The classics emphasize that "a dharma born from causes is not called permanent". Your salary, property prices, and industry dividends are all "conditioned dharmas" (有為法, saṃskṛta-dharma) temporarily assembled from countless complex conditions (economic cycles, technological iteration, corporate operations). Ordinary people mistake this temporary stability for "conventional permanence." Once the larger environment shifts and layoffs occur, this illusory "permanence" collapses instantly, bringing crushing suffering.
Scenario Two: Scrolling Short Videos and Big-Data Algorithms (Mistaking "Accumulated Experience" for the "Permanence of Non-Buddhist Meditation") * Life Situation: You have scrolled short videos for three straight hours, and the algorithm precisely feeds you content you like based on data from the past several hundred days. You even feel you have grasped the laws of social operation and the essence of human nature, thinking, "The world is nothing more than this; past and present, it is always the same pattern." * Classical Mapping and Clarification: This closely resembles the non-Buddhist practitioners recorded in the *長阿含經*. In meditative absorption, relying on the power of recollecting past lives, they saw the cosmic formation and dissolution spanning twenty or eighty kalpas, and because they had witnessed extremely vast data patterns, they asserted, "The world is eternally existing; this is the truth". The Buddha points out that this is merely a "deluded clinging born of ignorance, seeing only morning and evening" produced within limited data observation. Your "constant" predictions about the world based on limited past experience and algorithmic feedback are merely delusions veiled by restricted cognition.
Scenario Three: The Promise of "Forever Fresh" in Intimate Relationships (Mistaking "Verbal Speculation" for "True Permanence") * Life Situation: In romantic love or marriage, people desperately crave "eternal love," even attempting to lock it in through contracts, vows, and daily check-ins. Once the other person's emotions cool, one feels "the world is destroyed." * Classical Mapping and Clarification: This is a textbook case of the non-Buddhist "speculative permanence" (思量計度之常). Trying to find an eternal, unchanging psychological entity within the arising-and-ceasing emotions (conditioned dharmas) is like drawing a picture in the air—its causal characteristics are as unobtainable as a "rabbit's horn".
Scenario Four: Deep Awareness under Pressure (Glimpsing "True Permanence and the Middle Way" amid Impermanence) * Life Situation: On an extremely anxious late night, after overtime work, you sit in the back seat of a taxi, watching the neon lights rush past the window. Your body is exhausted; your mind is filled with metrics and mortgages (the marks of impermanence). But in a certain instant, you suddenly retreat into "awareness" itself—you realize that the "power of knowing" which is aware of being tired, aware of being anxious, does not in this moment rush past with the neon lights, nor does it arise and cease with the fluctuations of emotion. * Classical Mapping and Clarification: This awareness that illuminates all arising-and-ceasing yet is not tainted by arising-and-ceasing is precisely what the *大般涅槃經* calls "buddha-nature, unconditioned and permanent". It is not a calmness you "produced," but the "permanently abiding nature and characteristics" that remains inherently complete even when crowded out by afflictions. When you no longer cling to the scenery outside the window (impermanence), nor stubbornly hold to a fixed self (false permanence), but simply abide in this unborn, unceasing awareness, you begin to experience the middle-way meaning of "neither permanent nor impermanent".
Why Contemporary People Need It
Contemporary society is an age of extreme defocus. On the one hand, rapid technological iteration and drastic social change accelerate all substantive experience into "impermanence." On the other hand, contemporary technology (such as large language models, algorithmic prediction, and genetic engineering) attempts to forge for humanity an illusion of "controllable, constant" certainty through vast data and control.
This morbid demand for "certainty" is precisely the strongest contemporary expression of "clinging to permanence." The reasons contemporary people need to understand the Buddhist meaning of "permanence" are:
1. Breaking the Anxieties of a "Control Freak": Most contemporary psychological breakdowns stem from trying to maintain a false image of "permanence" (a stable position, a never-fading relationship, an eternally youthful body) through a conditioned mindset. Understanding the Buddhist analysis of "false permanence" frees one from excessive clinging to worldly conditions, making clear that "a dharma born from causes is not called permanent", and allowing one to accept the world's changes with equanimity.
2. Establishing an Ultimate Inner Psychological Anchor: If Buddhism only taught "impermanence, suffering, emptiness," people would easily fall into nihilism (thinking everything is meaningless, and "living in the moment" means indulgence). But the "true permanence" and "permanence, bliss, self, purity" (常樂我淨) proposed in the *大般涅槃經* point contemporary people toward an ultimate anchor that transcends the world's ups and downs: our inner awareness (buddha-nature) is unconditioned and permanent. In this turbulent world, you need not seek security outward; your awareness itself is the deepest place of rest.
3. Cognitive Comparison with AI and Frontier Science: Modern AI algorithms train on vast historical data to predict future trends. This mechanism is extremely similar to the non-Buddhist practitioners in the classics who, relying on "the memory of twenty or forty kalpas" in meditation, asserted that "the world is eternally existing". However, the limitation of algorithmic models is that they can only perform probabilistic inference based on "already-occurred conditioned-dharma data (induction from the past)." The certainty they establish is merely a "speculative false permanence." Science (e.g., the second law of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics) reveals the impermanence and probability of the material world, but science can currently only observe the arising and ceasing of "characteristics" and cannot answer the ultimate destination of "awareness itself." The Buddhist exposition of "the permanence of ultimate meaning" (第一義常) precisely fills the gap in contemporary scientific philosophy regarding "subjective awareness and ultimate reality."
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
* Misreading One: Since Buddhism teaches "impermanence," doesn't the Mahāyāna teaching of "true permanence" mean Buddhism has regressed into the non-Buddhist theory of a Self? * Clarification: Absolutely not. The "permanence" taught by non-Buddhists is a "sovereign/entity Self" (speculative permanence, eternal world) built on intellectual conjecture or limited meditative states. The Mahāyāna scriptures (e.g., the *楞伽經*) explicitly state that the Tathāgata's "true permanence" is the "unthinkable permanence of ultimate meaning" (第一義常不思議), an unconditioned dharma personally realized through "self-realized noble wisdom" (自覺聖智). To prevent people from misreading it as a Self, the scriptures specifically establish the defensive line of "neither permanent nor impermanent"—it is by no means an entity that can be grasped or dominated, but the true suchness of reality free from all verbal proliferation.
* Misreading Two: "Permanence" means the immortality of the soul—that after death an eternal self continues to exist. * Clarification: This is a classic secular delusion. The "permanence" spoken of in Buddhism refers to the unborn, unceasing "awareness/dharma-nature" (buddha-nature, nirvāṇa), not the "individual soul" or "self-consciousness" composed of the five aggregates (五陰, pañcaskandha: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness). That "self" which thinks and experiences joy and anger is itself a conditioned, arising-and-ceasing "impermanent" dharma.
* Misreading Three: Saying "the constant Dharma of the Buddhas" involves various miraculous manifestations (such as birth from the right side, walking seven steps)—isn't this superstitious myth-making? * Clarification: In the Āgama scriptures, "the constant Dharma of the Buddhas" emphasizes the orderliness and sacredness of "thus is the Dharma, naturally so" (法爾如是). It is not promoting personality cults, but expressing that, in the Buddhist worldview, the appearance of an awakened one is not an accidental random event, but the necessary manifestation of the universe's spiritual law (the pattern of the dharma-realm) in the phenomenal world. Just as the constancy of the speed of light in physics, it represents the eternal track of the path of awakening at the level of phenomenal regularity.
* Misreading Four: As long as one understands "all is empty, all is impermanent," one need not bother with "true permanence." * Clarification: Remaining only at the level of "impermanence, suffering, emptiness" is called in Buddhism the "external liberation" of the śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas (聲聞緣覺); this liberation is not ultimate. When the Buddha first turned the Dharma wheel at Vārāṇasī, he taught "impermanence" to break beings' attachment to the world; at Kuśinagara, as he approached nirvāṇa, he taught "permanence, bliss, self, purity" to point out the ultimate destination. If one clings to "impermanence," one easily falls into the view of annihilation. Only by penetrating "true permanence" can one fully possess the boundless virtues of the great nirvāṇa.