Everything about Dukkha totally explained
Dukkha (
Pāli दुक्ख;
Sanskrit दुःख ; according to grammatical tradition derived from "uneasy", but according to
Monier-Williams more likely a
Prakritized form of "unsteady, disquieted") is a central concept in
Buddhism, the word roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including
suffering,
pain, sorrow, affliction,
anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort,
anguish,
stress,
misery, and
frustration. The term is probably derived from, "standing badly," "unsteady," "uneasy."
In classic Sanskrit, the term was often compared to a large potter's wheel that would screech as it was spun around, and didn't turn smoothly. The opposite of
dukkha was the term
sukha, which brought to mind a potter's wheel that turned smoothly and noiselessly. In other Buddhist-influenced cultures, similar imagery was used to describe
dukkha. An example from China is the cart with one wheel that's slightly broken, so that the rider is jolted each time the wheel rolls over the broken spot.
Although dukkha is often translated as "suffering", its philosophical meaning is more complex. It also contains such deeper ideas as "imperfection", "unease", "anguish" and "unsatisfactoriness". "Suffering" is too narrow a translation with "negative emotional connotations" (Jeffrey Po), which can give the impression that the Buddhist view is one of
pessimism, but Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but realistic. Thus in English-language Buddhist literature
dukkha is often left untranslated, so as to encompass its full range of meaning.
.
Dukkha was translated as
kǔ ("bitterness; hardship; suffering; pain") in
Chinese Buddhism, and this
loanword is pronounced
ku (苦) in
Japanese Buddhism and
ko (苦) in
Korean Buddhism. In Tibetan it's སྡུག་བསྔལ་
sdug bsngal.
Dukkha is the focus of the
Four Noble Truths, which state its nature, its cause, its cessation, and the way leading to its cessation. This way is known as the
Noble Eightfold Path. Ancient texts, like
Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta
and
Anuradha Sutta, show
Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha, as insisting that the truths about dukkha are the only ones he's teaching as far as attaining the ultimate goal of
nirvana is concerned.
The Buddha discussed three kinds of dukkha.
- Dukkha-dukkha (pain of pain) is the obvious sufferings of :
- pain
- illness
- old age
- death
- bereavement
- Viparinama-dukkha (pain of alteration) is suffering caused by change:
- violated expectations
- the failure of happy moments to last
- Sankhara-dukkha (pain of formation) is a subtle form of suffering inherent in the nature of conditioned things, including the
- skandhas
- the factors constituting the human mind
It denotes the experience that all formations (sankhara) are impermanent (
anicca) - thus it explains the qualities which make the mind as fluctuating and impermanent entities. It is therefore also a gateway to
anatta, selflessness (no-self). Insofar as it's dynamic, ever-changing, uncontrollable and not finally satisfactory, experience is itself precisely dukkha. The question which underlay the Buddha's quest was "in what may I place lasting relevance?" He didn't deny that there are satisfactions in experience: the exercise of
vipassana assumes that the meditator sees instances of happiness clearly. Pain is to be seen as pain, and pleasure as pleasure. It is denied that such happiness will be secure and lasting.
Dukkha is also listed among the
three marks of existence, and the Buddha taught with his first three Noble Truths that it exists, has discernible causes, of which there's an account, and that there's a path for release from it. The final Noble Truth is his path.
Further Information
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