Anicca

Impermanence: everything that arises passes away.

Anicca is a Pali word meaning impermanence or inconstancy. In the Buddha's teaching it is the first of the three marks of existence, together with dukkha, unsatisfactoriness, and anatta, non-self. Everything that arises from causes and conditions will also pass away: bodies, feelings, thoughts, relationships, mountains and stars.

That sounds gloomy, but in Buddhism insight into impermanence is precisely liberating. Much suffering arises because we cling to what cannot last, or push away what will pass anyway. Whoever truly sees that everything changes can hold on more lightly: enjoy without grasping, feel sorrow without drowning in it. According to tradition the Buddha's last words were: all conditioned things are impermanent; strive with diligence.

In meditation anicca is not only understood as an idea, but experienced: you see how a breath comes and goes, how a feeling arises and disappears, how thoughts pass by. In the vipassana tradition that is the core of insight meditation.

For dreams impermanence is a fruitful concept. Dreams themselves are the best example of inconstancy: they feel real and vanish on waking. Images such as melting snow, falling leaves, a crumbling house or a deceased person leaving again are often read in Buddhist readings in the light of anicca: not as misfortune, but as an invitation to let go.

Japanese poetry knows a related feeling, mono no aware: the gentle poignancy of the impermanence of things, as with falling cherry blossom. Impermanence applies to the pleasant and the painful alike: a heavy period passes too.

On Dreamkin the Buddhist readings use this perspective to look calmly at bad dreams.