Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) — "All conditioned things are impermanent — when one sees this with wisdom, then on…"
All conditioned things are impermanent — when one sees this with wisdom, then one turns away from suffering.
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More from Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)
"Should a seeker not find a friend, wiser or better than himself, let him rather walk alone; there is no fellowship with fools."
"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."
"Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow, death comes."
"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."
"Much though he recites the sacred texts, but acts not accordingly, that heedless man is like a cowherd who only counts the cows of others."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Everything that comes into being through causes and conditions eventually changes or ends. Relationships, possessions, feelings, even our own bodies are temporary. The quote argues that truly grasping this truth, not just intellectually but deeply, loosens our grip on clinging. When we stop expecting permanence from things that cannot provide it, we free ourselves from the disappointment and craving that generate most of our pain.
Relevance to Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)
This is a core teaching of the Buddha, tied directly to his awakening under the Bodhi tree. After abandoning his princely life and years of extreme asceticism, he identified impermanence (anicca) as one of the three marks of existence. As a teacher who spent 45 years traveling northern India guiding monks and laypeople, he repeatedly returned to this insight as the gateway out of dukkha, the suffering he vowed to help others escape.
The era
In 5th-century BCE northern India, the dominant Vedic-Brahmanical tradition emphasized an eternal self (atman) and ritual sacrifice to secure favorable rebirth. The Buddha taught during the sramana movement, when wandering ascetics openly challenged priestly orthodoxy. Declaring all conditioned things impermanent directly contradicted Brahmanical metaphysics and offered an alternative path based on direct insight rather than caste-bound ritual, which is partly why his teachings spread rapidly across the Ganges plain.
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