On "Impermanence and No-Self"

Gerhard Richter Kerze, 1982 - Museum Frieder Burda

In "The Art of Living," Thich Nhat Hanh writes writes that impermanence is 

the nature of something - whether it's a flower, star, your loved one, or your own body. But we shouldn't think that impermanence refers only to the outer appearance, and inside there is something everlasting. Impermanence means that nothing can remain the same thing in two consecutive moments. 

So in fact there is no lasting thing that we can call in permanent; it's semantically absurd to say everything is impermanent. The truth is that everything is only for one brief instant. Suppose we contemplate the flickering flame of a candle. At first, it seems that there is one continuous flame, but in the back what we are seeing is a multitude of flame succeeding each other. From 1 milliseconds to the next, new Flames are manifesting from new non flame elements, including oxygen and Fuel. And the flame is radiating light and heat and I'll directions. Input and output are going on all the time. The plane we see now is not exactly the same as the playing we saw a moment ago, nor is it entirely different. 

In the same way, we too are always changing. Our body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and Consciousness are changing from one moment to the next every second, the cells in our body, as well as our feelings, perceptions, ideas, and states of Mind, are giving way to new ones.

Joseph Goldstein speaks about impermance in an interview in Inquiry Minds magazine.

 Impermanence is the constant, basic universal truth of change. Impermanence is both a process of continual loss, in which things exist and then disappear, and it is also a process of continuous rebirth or creativity, in which things that do not exist suddenly appear. We can see this on a momentary level in meditation. For example, sounds, thoughts or sensations continually are disappearing and new ones arising. We can also see it very clearly in the ordinary circumstances of our lives. Where has our experience of breakfast gone by midmorning? Where is the conversation we had with a friend by the next afternoon? Sometimes we are more aware of new things arising, and sometimes we notice their passing away. But change is always obvious when we pay attention.

In Buddhism, there are "three characteristics of existence": impermanence, unsatisfactoriness (dukkha/suffering), and nonself.    They are the conditions of being human.   Experience is constantly changing, it's unreliable, and it arises out of conditions (rather than simply our wish that things be a certain way).  

Joseph Goldstein points out, "There is a great paradox here because these truths are at once both obvious and hidden."

On one level impermanence is so obvious to almost everyone that on the whole we generally ignore it. It is such an ordinary truth that we don’t give it any importance. And yet, when we do pay attention to it, when we bring some real interest and energy to that seeing, when we are actually vitally experiencing the impermanence of our present experience, in that moment the mind is not clinging. This is an immediate fruit—a mind free of contraction, a relaxed heart.