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Buddhism begins from the Buddha's observation about how things are: everything in experience is changing, nothing has a fixed self, and ordinary life is marked by dissatisfaction. These are the Three Marks of Existence (tilakkhana), and they are the framework for the Buddhist account of why people suffer and what to do about it. The terms below are given in Pali, the language of the Theravada scriptures; Mahayana Buddhists often use the Sanskrit forms (anitya, anatman, duhkha, trishna, karma), and the ideas are shared.

Anicca: impermanence

Anicca means that everything conditioned is always changing. Mountains wear away, bodies age, feelings come and go, and thoughts rise and fade from moment to moment. Buddhists do not treat this as a gloomy observation about death alone. It applies to every experience, including pleasant ones, which is why clinging to them leads to disappointment: a thing that cannot last cannot be a lasting source of happiness.

The Buddha is said to have taught that nothing arises without conditions and that when the conditions change, the thing changes. This idea of dependent arising (paticca samuppada) underlies anicca. Meditating on impermanence is meant to loosen attachment, and Buddhists often point to the aim of seeing change as simply how things are, which can bring calm in the face of loss or illness.

Anatta: no fixed self

Anatta means "not-self". The Buddha taught that there is no permanent, unchanging soul or ego at the centre of a person. What we call a person is made up of five constantly changing groups of factors, the five aggregates (khandhas): the body or physical form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations (such as intentions and habits) and consciousness. None of these is a self, and together they are not a self either, because each is impermanent.

A teacher's traditional illustration is the chariot: the word names an arrangement of wheels, axle and frame, and there is no extra "chariot" apart from the parts. In the same way, a person is a process rather than a thing. This is not the claim that a person does not exist in any sense; it denies that anything in us stays the same from one moment to the next, or from one life to the next, and it is the reason Buddhists speak of rebirth as a continuing process rather than of a soul moving to a new body. Buddhists contrast this with the Hindu belief in an eternal atman.

Anatta has practical effects. If there is no fixed self to defend, pride, selfishness and fear for the self lose their ground, and compassion for others becomes more natural, since the boundary between "me" and "them" is not as firm as it seems.

Dukkha: suffering and unsatisfactoriness

Dukkha is often translated as suffering, though it covers more than pain: it means that life is unsatisfactory and cannot offer lasting fulfilment. Buddhist teaching describes several forms of dukkha.

• Obvious suffering: birth, illness, ageing, death, grief and pain.
• The suffering of change: pleasant experiences end, so even happiness carries the seed of loss.
• The suffering of conditioned existence: because everything is impermanent and without a fixed self, ordinary life as a whole never fully satisfies.

The First Noble Truth states that dukkha is a fact of life. This is a diagnosis, and the Buddha is often compared to a doctor: the Four Noble Truths name the illness (dukkha), its cause (craving), the cure (nibbana, the end of craving) and the treatment (the Eightfold Path).

How the three marks are connected

The three marks explain one another. Because things are impermanent (anicca) and there is no fixed self to hold on to them (anatta), clinging to them as if they could last or belong to a permanent "me" produces dukkha. Understanding all three through experience, and not just agreeing with them, is what Buddhists call wisdom (panna). For a Buddhist the practical result is a different way of living: less grasping, more acceptance of change, and care for others whose lives are equally impermanent.

Tanha: craving

The Second Noble Truth says that the cause of dukkha is tanha, craving or thirst. Three kinds are named in the tradition: craving for sense pleasures, craving to become or to continue existing, and craving not to exist, which includes the wish to be rid of whatever is unpleasant. The image is of a thirst that is never quenched: getting what we want gives a brief satisfaction, and then the wanting returns, often for something else.

Craving matters beyond the present moment because it feeds kamma and so keeps the cycle of rebirth turning. Ending craving is therefore the same thing as ending dukkha and reaching nibbana.

The Three Root Poisons

The tradition names three mental states at the root of unskilful action, the Three Root Poisons (also called the three fires or three unwholesome roots). They are shown at the centre of the Tibetan Wheel of Life as three animals.

Ignorance is often treated as the root of the other two: because a person does not understand impermanence and not-self, they grasp at what they like and push away what they dislike. Each poison has an opposite that Buddhists try to develop: generosity against greed, loving-kindness (metta) against hatred, and wisdom against ignorance. Actions rooted in the poisons produce unwholesome kamma; actions rooted in generosity, loving-kindness and wisdom produce wholesome kamma.

Kamma

Kamma (Sanskrit karma) means "action", and in Buddhism refers to intentional action of body, speech or mind. What matters is intention (cetana): the Buddha taught that it is intention that makes an act skilful or unskilful. Wholesome intentions bring results that tend to be pleasant, unwholesome ones results that tend to be unpleasant, and these results (vipaka) may be experienced in this life or in a later one.

Kamma is not a system of reward and punishment handed out by a judge, and it is not the same as fate. Buddhists see it as a natural law of cause and effect, like a seed producing its fruit, and say that people shape their own future by how they act now. Some Buddhists emphasise that circumstances are not entirely the result of past kamma, since many other conditions play a part; the teaching is mostly used to encourage responsibility for what one does.

This has practical effects. A Buddhist trying to live well pays attention to the intentions behind actions, and trains to act from generosity, kindness and understanding, since these produce good kamma and, more importantly, weaken the poisons that bind a person to the cycle of samsara.

Why these beliefs matter in a Buddhist life

The three marks explain the problem, tanha and the Root Poisons explain its source, and kamma explains how it carries on. They set up the rest of Buddhist practice: the Five Precepts and the Eightfold Path are how a person acts to reduce harmful kamma and loosen craving, and meditation is how they see the three marks for themselves. A Buddhist might say that the teachings are valuable because they can be tested in experience; a critic might reply that the denial of a self is hard to reconcile with rebirth and personal responsibility, to which Buddhists answer that a continuing process of cause and effect is enough to ground both.