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Dukkha (Pāli दुक्ख; Sanskrit दुःख duḥkha; according to grammatical tradition derived from dus-kha "uneasy", but according to Monier-Williams more likely a Prakritized form of dus-stha "unsteady, disquieted"[1]) is a Pali term roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including suffering, pain, discontent, unsatisfactoriness, unhappiness, sorrow, affliction, social alienation, 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.
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Sargeant, et. al. (2009: p. 303) provides the etymology of the Sanskrit words sukha and duḥkha:
It is perhaps amusing to note the etymology of the words sukha (pleasure, comfort, bliss) and duḥkha (misery, unhappiness, pain). The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning "sky," "ether," or "space," was originally the word for "hole," particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan's vehicles. Thus sukha … meant, originally, "having a good axle hole," while duhkha meant "having a poor axle hole," leading to discomfort.[2]
Sanskrit prefix 'su' is used as an emphasis suggesting wholesome, high, evolved, desirable, strong and such. [3]
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),[3] which can give the impression that the Buddhist view is one of pessimism, but Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but realistic.[4] Thus in English-language Buddhist literature dukkha is often left untranslated, so as to encompass its full range of meaning.[5][6][7]
The Buddha himself on Dukkha:
This, bhikkhus, is the Noble Truth of Dukkha: Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, sickness is dukkha, death is dukkha. Presence of objects we loathed is dukkha; separation from what we love is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha. — SN 56.11[8]
Accordingly, dukkha can refer to various unpleasant experiences in varying degrees. It can range anywhere from discomfort to suffering.
The Buddha embarked on a spiritual journey to find a way to end aging, death, and "dukkha". Dukkha is the focus of the Four Noble Truths that deal with the nature of "dukkha" in life, what is the cause of "dukkha", the cessation (cure) for "dukkha", and the techniques to bring about the cessation of "dukkha". The way leading to its cessation is known as the Noble Eightfold Path.[9] Texts like the Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta[10] and Anuradha Sutta,[11] show Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha, as insisting that the truths about dukkha and the way to end dukkha are the only ones he is teaching as far as attaining the ultimate goal of nirvana is concerned.
Although the First Noble Truth that "Life is Dukkha" sounds simple enough, it is not easy for many people to realize. The Anapanasati Sutta and Maha-satipatthana Sutta indicate that a person first needs to practice meditation to purify the mind of the five hindrances to wisdom and the ability to "see things as they truly are" before contemplating the Four Noble Truths, which begin with the nature of "dukkha" in life. For someone who has not seen what it's like to be without dukkha, it is difficult to realize that life is "dukkha". Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" can be helpful in this regard.
In "Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond", Ajahn Brahm, the Founder of Jhana Grove Meditation Retreat states that without the preparation of the mind through Jhana it is not easy to develop deep insight into dukkha. He gives a simile that is, in a way, similar to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave":
Another simile, to emphasize the same point, is that of the man who was born and raised in a prison and who has never set foot outside. All he knows is prison life. He would have no conception of the freedom that is beyond his world. And he would not understand that prison is suffering. If anybody suggested that his world was dukkha, he would disagree, for prison is the limit of his experience. But one day he might find the escape tunnel dug long ago that leads beyond the prison walls to the unimaginable and expansive world of real freedom. Only when he has entered that tunnel and escaped from his prison does he realize how much suffering prison actually was, and the end of that suffering, escaping from jail is happiness. In this simile the prison is the body, the high prison walls are the five senses, and the relentless demanding prison guard is one's own will, the doer. The tunnel dug long ago, through which one escapes, is called jhana ( as at AN IX, 42). Only when one has experienced jhana does one realize that the five -sense world, even at its best, is really a five-walled prison, some parts of it is a little more comfortable but still a jail with everyone on death row! Only after deep jhana does one realize that "will" was the torturer, masquerading as freedom, but preventing one ever resting happily at peace. Only outside of prison can one gain the data that produces the deep insight that discovers the truth about dukkha. In summary, without experience of jhana, one's knowledge of the world is too limited to fully understand dukkha, as required by the first noble truth, and proceed to enlightenment.[12]
As the Buddha said in Samyutta Nikaya #35:
What ordinary folk call happiness, the enlightened ones call dukkha
The Buddha discussed three kinds of dukkha or suffering:
pain, illness, old age, death, bereavement
violated expectations, the failure of happy moments to last
Dukkha is also listed among the three marks of existence: impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha) and not-self (anatta).[9] Dukkha 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.[13] 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.[13]
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.'"[14]
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, and khổ in Vietnamese Buddhism. In Tibetan it is sdug bsngal (སྡུག་བསྔལ་). In Shan, it is တုၵ်ႉၶႃႉ ([tuk˥kʰaː˥]) and in Burmese, it is ဒုက္ခ ([douʔkʰa̰]).
In Hindu literature, the earliest Upaniṣads — the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya — are believed to predate or coincide with the advent of Buddhism.[15] In these texts' verses, the Sanskrit word duḥkha (translated below as "suffering" and "distress") occurs only twice. In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, it states (in English and Sanskrit):
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While we are still here, we have come to know it [ātman]. |
ihaiva santo 'tha vidmas tad vayaṃ na ced avedir mahatī vinaṣṭiḥ |
In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad is written:
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When a man rightly sees, |
na paśyo mṛtyuṃ paśyati na rogaṃ nota duḥkhatām |
Thus, as in Buddhism, in these sacred texts the eradication of duḥkha is a desired and promised outcome; here duḥkha serves as an antipode to the ultimate Brahmanic goal of immortality (amṛtās). In addition, as in Buddhism, one overcomes duḥkha through the development of a transcendent understanding.[20] Nonetheless, in these Brahmanic sacred texts, duḥkha 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.