The Buddhist doctrine of annicca, the transitoriness of all phenomena, finds classical expression in the oft-recurrent formula: Sabbe sankhara annicca and in the more popular statement: Annicca vata sankhara. Both these formulae amount to saying that all conditioned things or phenomenal processes, mental as well as material, that go to make up the samsaric plane of existence are transient or impermanent. This law of impermanence is not the result of any kind of metaphysical inquiry or of any mystical intuition. It is a straight forward judgement arrived at by investigation and analysis, and as such its basis is entirely empirical.
It is in fact for the purpose of showing the unsubstantially and impermanence of the world of experience that Buddhism analyses it into a multiplicity of basic factors. The earliest attempts at explaining this situation are represented in the analyses into five khandhas, twelve ayatanas, and eighteen dhatus. In the Abhidhamma we get the most detailed analysis into eighty one basic elements, which are introduced by the technical term, dhamma. These are the basic factors into which the empiric individuality in relation to the external world is ultimately analysed. They purport to show that there does not exist a "unity", "substance", "atta" or "jiva". In the ultimate analysis the socalled unity is a complex of factors, "one" is really "many". This applied to both mind and matter equally. In case of living beings there is no soul or self which is immortal, while in the case of things in general there is no essence which is ever-perduring.
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