Suffering, Dukkha

shanyin

Apparently the Buddha spoke the ancient Indian language called Pali. Also, there is no one word equivalent for 'dukkha'.

What does Dukkha mean? Is there a Pali word for suffering and did he use it?

shanyin

Thank you paige that helps.

misecmisc1

To understand what the Buddha meant, it's important to understand what dukkha means.
The word usually is translated into English as "suffering." But it also means temporary, limited and imperfect. In the Buddhist sense, it refers to anything that is conditioned. Something that is conditioned is not absolute or independent of other things.

Thus, something beautiful and pleasant is dukkha, because it will end. For example, a new sports car is dukkha, because eventually it will be a rustbucket.

My understanding of Buddha's teachings says: dukkha means unsatisfactoriness, a feeling of something missing in it to give everlasting happiness. all conditioned pheomena are anicca(impermanent), dukkha(unsatisfactory) and anatta(non-self or not mine).

so - Thus, something beautiful and pleasant is dukkha, because it will end. - this is not the case. it is the craving and clinging which leads to suffering. there is no problem with a thing if it is beautiful or pleasant. the problem arises when we want that beautifulness or pleasantness to everlast, so because of our this wanting, we suffer, when that beautiful thing( because it is conditioned, so impermanent) changes to a not beautiful thing.

The Five Skandhas(Aggregates) are not dukkha in themselves because they are conditioned. Rather it is the craving and clinging to these five aggregates, which causes dukkha to arise, because since these Five Skandhas(Aggregates) are conditioned, so they are impermanent, so they change.

riverflow

Translated as 'suffering,' dukkha can be very misleading. In fact that is why Buddhism was quickly labelled as 'pessimistic' by westerners--even by those early western admirers of Buddhism (cf. Schopenhauer). And so the First Noble Truth simply ends up meaning: 'Life sucks.' That really misses the real depth in what the Buddha was teaching.

Dukkha may include suffering, but it is not identical to only suffering. It encompasses a wider range --things in life are incapable of bringing any final satisfaction. So even pleasant things in life falls under dukkha. Because of impermanence and the perpetual changes that necessarily occur in life, there is no stability in life to be found anywhere that resolves anything. Whatever one clings to will change (and the one who does the clinging changes likewise). Because we believe things actually exist in some essential, stable, unchanging way (including, most of all, our sense of self) we fall under the spell of delusion.

Glenn Wallis has translated the word as 'unease' which is pervasive in life which captures the broader range of dukkha. Thich Nhat Hanh sometimes says 'ill-being.'

fivebells

Hi, @shanyin. Can you say a bit more about how the question has come up for you?

music

In layman's terms, dukkha means: Life's a b*tch and then you die.

So the solution in Buddha Dharma is to make sure you don't take birth again.

lobster

Thus, something beautiful and pleasant is dukkha, because it will end

This is my kind of duck.
Imagine being stuck in paradise with the coolest everything and everyone you could conceive. After a few billion years or maybe as soon as next Thursday, you would get bored and start watching the reruns or wishing for a bit of boring monotony to take away the excitement. Why? Because that is the nature of ducks.

Now I have heard that this temporary and fluctuating universe, once accepted is also quite a nirvana. So 'suffering' and not minding is part of the same raft of duck.

riverflow

riverflow said:

In fact that is why Buddhism was quickly labelled as 'pessimistic' by westerners--even by those early western admirers of Buddhism (cf. Schopenhauer). And so the First Noble Truth simply ends up meaning: 'Life sucks.' That really misses the real depth in what the Buddha was teaching.

For example:

music said:

In layman's terms, dukkha means: Life's a b*tch and then you die.

So the solution in Buddha Dharma is to make sure you don't take birth again.

This is what happens when Schopenhauer is confused with the suttas.

shanyin

@fivebells

Well I have been reading about Buddhism lately. A monk at a monastery I went on retreat at said somewhere on his website that there is no english translation for dukkha. I'm interested to learn a word so central in what the Buddha taught.

Also, as illustrated in this thread, there is alot of non-understanding about what it means. You find it all over the place. So I am intrigued to learn 100% perfectly what the word means. However I have a hard time absorbing reading material that takes alot of intellegence lately but the replies have been thoughtful and are much appreciated.

Sabre

You won't get it by intelligence, and you won't get it by reading more and more. Even if you find the perfect translation, it's still wrong. Even if you use the word itself, it is still wrong. Dukkha is just a word the Buddha came up with to describe a reality. It's not a reality itself. Because if you really listen, there are no words.

People struggle over 'suffering' versus 'unsatisfactory' or whatever, but in the end, it's all just words. If you want to learn 100% perfectly, you have to be still and let go in your meditation. Whatever you let go, will give higher peace. So that which you let go, was surely dukkha. First of all, let thoughts go.

With metta,
Sabre

BeeHurst

Sabre said:

People struggle over 'suffering' versus 'unsatisfactory' or whatever, but in the end, it's all just words.

It not the just words. When the Buddha is old the Buddha eat the poison food. Buddha having the painful feeling very much from the food poison. When Buddha having the food poison stomach pain Buddha mind not having the suffering mental pain. Only the body pain. Buddha mind peaceful when Buddha physical body have the painful feeling.

You ought to know there is many kind of dukkha in the language of the Pali. Dukkha is the painful feeling called the vedana in Pali. Dukkha is the unsatisfactory condition in the Pali called the lakkhana like the computer operation only for 3 year 4 year 5 year. Unsatisfactory impermanent plastic computer. Dukkha is the mental suffering of the "I am" self called the sankhara mental concoction. Buddha have the dukkha pain. Buddha experience with vipassana the unsatisfactory dukkha object of world. But Buddha not have the sankhara dukkha of self attachment.

fivebells

@shanyin, you might find this essay interesting.

Is a mountain heavy?

It may be heavy in and of itself, but as long as we don't try to lift it up, it won't be heavy for us.

This is a metaphor that one of my teachers, Ajaan Suwat, often used when explaining how to stop suffering from the problems of life. You don't deny their existence — the mountains are heavy — and you don't run away from them. As he would further explain, you deal with problems where you have to and solve them where you can. You simply learn how not to carry them around. That's where the art of the practice lies: in living with real problems without making their reality burden the heart.

As a beginning step in mastering that art, it's useful to look at the source for Ajaan Suwat's metaphor — the Buddha's teachings on dukkha — to get a fuller idea of how far the metaphor extends.

footiam

shanyin said:

Apparently the Buddha spoke the ancient Indian language called Pali. Also, there is no one word equivalent for 'dukkha'.

What does Dukkha mean? Is there a Pali word for suffering and did he use it?

Presently, in Malay, duka means to be filled with sadness and this duka, I heard, is a word borrowed from the Indians. Whatever word it is, never mind, suffering is suffering. If it is there, it is there. If it can be eradicated, it can be eradicated. The words used do not matter.

misecmisc1

footiam said:

shanyin said:

Apparently the Buddha spoke the ancient Indian language called Pali. Also, there is no one word equivalent for 'dukkha'.

What does Dukkha mean? Is there a Pali word for suffering and did he use it?

Presently, in Malay, duka means to be filled with sadness and this duka, I heard, is a word borrowed from the Indians. Whatever word it is, never mind, suffering is suffering. If it is there, it is there. If it can be eradicated, it can be eradicated. The words used do not matter.

Dukkha is a word in Hindi and since Hindi is derived from Sanskrit, so may be Sanskrit also had these words dukkha and sukkha. since i studied Sanskrit till my class 8 which was a long time before, so now i have almost forgotten all of Sanskrit. But since Hindi is derived from Sanskrit, so I guess Sanskrit can have these words dukkha and sukkha.

As far as the literal meaning of dukkha and sukkha is concerned, in Hindi, dukkha means feeling of pain (or sorrow) and sukkha means feeling of pleasure (or happiness).

jll

The closest word is 'unsatisfactory.

shanyin said:

Apparently the Buddha spoke the ancient Indian language called Pali. Also, there is no one word equivalent for 'dukkha'.

What does Dukkha mean? Is there a Pali word for suffering and did he use it?

Cinorjer

Dukkha is the antonym of Sukkha, which means happiness, pleasure, satisfying, and even "sweet or tasty" when applied to food. So Dukkha means the opposite of any of those. The problem isn't that Dukkha has some sort of unique meaning, but that the English language has a much larger vocabulary so we don't have to use one word to cover a lot of meanings. Think of Dukkha as one of those general terms like "bad". Why is something bad? Well, it could be for countless reasons.

So instead of one specific word that fits, we need to look for words that have a much broader, general meaning. That isn't "stress" or even "suffering" which are much too specific. Suffering in particular denotes an intensity. Torture is designed to produce suffering. Suffering is certainly Dukkha, but so is that feeling when you look around at everything you have and realize it's not enough. Are you suffering? No. But you're not happy.

I don't know why people resist the simple translation of "unhappiness" or "unsatisfying". That's general enough to mean everything Dukkha means. Maybe people think that minimizes the profound observation. We are not satisfied and not happy, no matter what is happening in our lives. Sometimes it's because we have real problems and we're really suffering, and sometimes it's because what we have is never enough or meets our expectations.

karasti

We just talked about this at the retreat tonight, actually. As someone else said, suffering is not an adequate term but it is used a lot in the western world. Dukkha includes suffering but is not limited to suffering. What Lama Tony Duff said was that Dukkha is everything that is not ok. It is the opposite of Nirvana.

That when a being is enlightened, they are on one side, that of Nirvana. The rest of us are on the other side, stuck in Dukkha. Dukkha reminds me much of dookie, or poop, which is pretty accurate, LOL. We're all stuck in the poopy. Unsatisfactory is a good way to describe it, that is another word we used a lot tonight. He asked us if any of us had a satisfactory day. One lady answered that she had. Except she had had a headache, and a splinter that she removed because it hurt and so on. Lots of dukkha in our lives.

Anyhow, the discussion we had tonight made more sense to me than most other descriptions I've heard, and I found it ironic to run into it here just now.

fivebells

If you're on retreat, it would hugely benefit you to get off the internet and avoid all other forms of interpersonal verbal communication as much as possible.

karasti

It's just a short, informal part-time weekend thing. I go for a few hours, then come home to my very noisy kids, pets and husband. I'm not hiding out in a silent retreat in the mountains or anything. Rather hard to avoid communication when I come back home to my normal life after a couple hours Can't not talk to my family, lol.