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 Pali term roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including
suffering,
pain, unsatisfactoriness, sorrow, affliction,
anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort,
anguish,
stress,
misery, and
frustration. In
Buddhism, the
Four Noble Truths on
dukkha are taught as the primary means to attain the ultimate aim of
nirvana.
Meaning
In classic Sanskrit, the term
was often compared to a large potter's wheel that would screech as it was spun around, and did not 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 is 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 analogous to "disquietude" as in the condition of being disturbed. As such, "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.
.
Non-English translations
Dukkha was translated as
kǔ (
苦 "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 is སྡུག་བསྔལ་
sdug bsngal.
Buddhist literature
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.
[Michael Carrithers, The Buddha. Cited in Founders of Faith, Oxford University Press, 1986, page 51.] 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 is teaching as far as attaining the ultimate goal of
nirvana is concerned.
The Buddha discussed three kinds of dukkha or
suffering:
- Dukkha-dukkha (pain of pain) is the obvious sufferings of :
- Viparinama-dukkha (pain of alteration) is suffering caused by change:
- the failure of happy moments to last
- Sankhara-dukkha (pain of formation) is a subtle form of suffering arising as a reaction to qualities of conditioned things, including the
- the factors constituting the human mind
Dukkha is also listed among the
three marks of existence: impermanence (
anicca), suffering (
dukkha) and not-self (
anatta).
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, not-self.
Insofar as it is dynamic, ever-changing, uncontrollable and not finally satisfactory, unexamined life is itself precisely dukkha.
[Carrithers (1986), op cit., pages 55-56.] The question which underlay the Buddha's quest was "in what may I place lasting relevance?" He did not 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 happiness dependent on conditions will be secure and lasting.
In the early texts, the
skandhas explain what suffering is. According to Noa Ronkin, "What emerges from the texts ... is a wider signification of the khandhas than merely the aggregates constituting the person. Sue Hamilton has provided a detailed study of the khandhas. Her conclusion is that the associating of the five khandhas as a whole with dukkha indicates that experience is a combination of a straightforward cognitive process together with the psychological orientation that colours it in terms of unsatisfactoriness. Experience is thus both cognitive and affective, and cannot be separated from perception. As one's perception changes, so one's experience is different: we each have our own particular cognitions, perceptions and volitional activities in our own particular way and degree, and our own way of responding to and interpreting our experience
is our very experience. In harmony with this line of thought, Gethin observes that the khadhas are presented as five aspects of the nature of conditioned existence from the point of view of the experiencing subject; five aspects of one's experience. Hence each khandha represents 'a complex class of phenomena that is continuously arising and falling away in response to processes of consciousness based on the six spheres of sense. They thus become the five upādānakhandhas, encompassing both grasping and all that is grasped.'"
The Buddha himself on Dukkha— SN 56.11
Non-Buddhist literature
In
Brahmanic sacred literature, the earliest
Upaniads — the
and the
— are believed to predate or coincide with the advent of Buddhism. In these texts' verses, the Sanskrit word
dukha (translated below as "suffering" and "distress") occurs only twice. In the , it states (in English and Sanskrit):
While we are still here, we have come to know it [tman].
If you've not known it, great is your destruction.
Those who have known it — they become immortal.
As for the rest — only suffering awaits them.
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In the is written:
When a man rightly sees,
he sees no death, no sickness or distress.
When a man rightly sees,
he sees all, he wins all, completely.
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Thus, as in Buddhism, in these sacred texts the eradication of
dukha is a desired and promised outcome; here
dukha serves as an antipode to the ultimate Brahmanic goal of immortality (
). In addition, as in Buddhism, one overcomes
dukha through the development of a transcendent understanding. Nonetheless, in these Brahmanic sacred texts,
dukha is either identified as a general condition or as simply one of many undesirable states, not embodying the conceptual centrality assigned to it in Buddhism's
Pali Canon.
