Dukkha

From Hinduismpedia
(Redirected from Suffered)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Suffering1.jpg

Template:DisplayImages

suffering 苦 (Skt duhukha; Pali dukkha; Jpn ku )

Buddhism describes various categories of suffering, such as the four sufferings and the eight sufferings. The Sanskrit term duhukha (duhkha according to standard alphabetization) is rendered as suffering. It also means uneasiness, pain, sorrow, trouble, or difficulty. Shakyamuni's renunciation of the world and quest for enlightenment was motivated by a desire to find a Template:Wiki to the four sufferings of birth, aging, sickness, and death.

The first of the four noble truths, which Shakyamuni is said to have taught in his first Template:Wiki after attaining enlightenment, is the truth of suffering, i.e., the truth that all existence is suffering. Thus, the seeking and attaining of the way of release from suffering became the object of Buddhist practice. The doctrine that all existence is suffering constitutes one of the four Dharma seals, the four basic identifying Template:Wiki of Buddhism; the other three are that all existence is impermanent, that nothing has an Template:Wiki existence of its own, and that nirvana, enlightenment, is tranquil and quiet. See also four sufferings; eight sufferings.


Dukkha (Pāli; Sanskrit: duḥkha ; Tibetan phonetic: dukngal) is a Buddhist term commonly translated as "Suffering", "stress", "anxiety", or "dissatisfaction". Dukkha is identified as the first of The Four Noble Truths.


Within the Buddhist tradition, dukkha is commonly explained according to three different patterns or categories. In the first category, dukkha includes the obvious physical Suffering or pain associated with giving Template:Wiki, growing old, physical Template:Wiki and the process of dying. These outer discomforts are referred to as the dukkha of ordinary Suffering (dukkha-dukkha). In a second category, dukkha also includes the anxiety or Template:Wiki of trying to hold onto things that are constantly changing; these inner anxieties are called the dukkha produced by change (vipariṇāma-dukkha). The third pattern or category of dukkha refers to a basic Template:Wiki pervading all forms of Life because all forms of Life are Impermanent and constantly changing. On this level, the term indicates a lack of satisfaction, a sense that things never measure up to our expectations or standards. This Template:Wiki dissatisfaction is referred to as the dukkha of conditioned states (saṃkhāra-dukkha).


Neither Template:Wiki nor Template:Wiki, but Template:Wiki[edit | edit source]

The central importance of dukkha in Buddhist Philosophy is not intended to Template:Wiki a Template:Wiki view of Life, but rather to Template:Wiki a Template:Wiki Template:Wiki assessment of the human condition—that all beings must experience Suffering and Template:Wiki at some point in their lives, including the inevitable sufferings of Template:Wiki, Template:Wiki, and Death. Contemporary Buddhist teachers and translators Template:Wiki that while the central message of Buddhism is Template:Wiki, the Buddhist view of our situation in Life (the conditions that we live in) is neither Template:Wiki nor Template:Wiki, but Template:Wiki.

Walpola Rahula explains the importance of this Template:Wiki point of view:

First of all, Buddhism is neither Template:Wiki nor Template:Wiki. If anything at all, it is Template:Wiki, for it takes a Template:Wiki view of Life and of the World. It looks at things objectively (yathābhūtam). It does not falsely lull you into living in a fool's paradise, nor does it frighten and agonize you with all kinds of imaginary Template:Wiki and sins. It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the World around you is, and shows you the way to Template:Wiki freedom, peace, tranquility and Happiness. One Template:Wiki may gravely exaggerate an Template:Wiki and give up Template:Wiki altogether. Another may ignorantly declare that there is no Template:Wiki and that no treatment is necessary, thus deceiving the Template:Wiki with a false consolation.

You may call the first one Template:Wiki and the second Template:Wiki. Both are equally dangerous. But a third Template:Wiki diagnoses the Template:Wiki correctly, understands the cause and the nature of the Template:Wiki, sees clearly that it can be cured, and courageously administers a course of treatment, thus saving his Template:Wiki. The Buddha is like the last Template:Wiki. He is the wise and scientific doctor for the ills of the World (Template:Wiki or Template:Wiki-Guru).

18Dukkha.jpg

Surya Das emphasizes the matter-of-fact nature of dukkha:

Buddha Dharma does not teach that everything is Suffering. What Buddhism does say is that Life, by its nature, is difficult, flawed, and imperfect. [...] That's the nature of Life, and that's the first noble truth. From the Buddhist point of view, this is not a Judgement of Life's joys and sorrows; this is a simple, down-to-Earth, matter-of-fact description.


The Buddha acknowledged that there is both Happiness and Template:Wiki in the World, but he taught that even when we have some kind of Happiness, it is not permanent; it is subject to change. And due to this unstable, Impermanent nature of all things, everything we experience is said to have the quality of duhkkha or Template:Wiki. Therefore unless we can gain Insight into that Truth, and understand what is really able to provide lasting Happiness, and what is unable to provide Happiness, the Template:Wiki of dissatisfaction will persist. Three patterns

Within the Buddhist tradition, dukkha is commonly explained according to three different patterns or levels or categories:

Dukkha of ordinary Suffering
Template:Wiki produced by change
D5q1o4b.jpg
Dukkha of conditioned states


Types[edit | edit source]

Eight types[edit | edit source]

Dukkha can also be categorized into eight types belonging to the three categories of: inherited Suffering, the Suffering between the period of Template:Wiki and Death, and general misery. Chogyam Trunga explains these categories as follows:

Inherited Suffering:


Suffering between the periods of Template:Wiki and Death:

8846030.jpg
  • Getting what you don't want: being unable to avoid difficult or painful situations.
  • Not being able to hold onto what is desirable: the Template:Wiki of trying to hold onto what is desirable, lovely, splendid, terrific.
  • Not getting what you do want: this underlies the previous two categories; the anxiety of not getting what you want.


General Template:Wiki:


Six types[edit | edit source]

Aung San Suu Kyi presented a list of six great dukkha at her Template:Wiki Lecture, delivered on 16 June, 2012. These are:

  • To be conceived
  • To age
  • To sicken
  • To die
  • To be parted from those one loves
  • To be forced to live in propinquity with those one does not Love


Three marks of existence[edit | edit source]

Template:See Three marks of existence


Dukkha is also listed among the three marks of existence. These are:

In this context, 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.

Developing Insight into dukkha[edit | edit source]

Statue 02.jpg

Template:Wiki Buddhist teachings Template:Wiki the importance of practicing Meditation to develop Insight into dukkha. The Template:Wiki nature of dukkha eludes an unprepared Mind, as noted in Samyutta Nikaya #35, in which The Buddha says:

What ordinary folk call Happiness, the Enlightened ones call dukkha.


The Anapanasati Sutta and Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta each affirm that a person first needs to practice Meditation (jnana) to Template:Wiki the Mind of the five hindrances to Insight before contemplating The Four Noble Truths, which begin with the nature of "dukkha" in Life.

Without Template:Wiki of Meditation, one's Knowledge of the World is too limited to fully understand dukkha, as required by the first noble truth, and proceed to Enlightenment.

Contemporary scholar Micheal Carrithers also emphasizes the need to examine one's Life. Carrithers asserts that insofar as it is dynamic, ever-changing, uncontrollable and not finally satisfactory, unexamined Life is itself precisely dukkha. Carrithers also asserts that 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. Template:Wiki is to be seen as Template:Wiki, and Template:Wiki as Template:Wiki. It is denied that Happiness dependent on conditions will be secure and lasting.


Contemporary Buddhist teacher Ajahn Brahm emphasizes this point using a simile that compares the experience of dukkha to being in Template:Wiki, and compares Meditation (Pali: Jhana) to a tunnel that leads out of the Template:Wiki:

Another simile [...] is that of the man who was born and raised in a Template:Wiki and who has never set foot outside. All he knows is Template:Wiki Life. He would have no Template:Wiki of the freedom that is beyond his World. And he would not understand that Template:Wiki is Suffering. If anybody suggested that his World was dukkha, he would disagree, for Template:Wiki is the limit of his Template:Wiki. But one day he might find the escape tunnel dug long ago that leads beyond the Template:Wiki walls to the unimaginable and expansive World of Template:Wiki freedom. Only when he has entered that tunnel and escaped from his Template:Wiki does he realize how much Suffering Template:Wiki actually was, and the end of that Suffering, escaping from jail is Happiness.


In this simile the Template:Wiki is the Body, the high Template:Wiki walls are the Template:Wiki, and the relentless demanding Template:Wiki guard is one's own will, the doer. The tunnel dug long ago, through which one escapes, is called Jhana meditation (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 Template:Wiki, 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 Template:Wiki can one gain the Template:Wiki 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.
Img 0516.jpg

Contemporary Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa explains that Meditation is designed to develop an understanding of dukkha:

Understanding Suffering dukkha is very important. The practice of Meditation is designed not to develop pleasure, but to understand the Truth of Suffering; and in order to understand the Truth of Suffering, one also has to understand the Truth of awareness. When true awareness takes place, Suffering does not exist. Through awareness, Suffering is somewhat changed in its Template:Wiki. It is not necessarily that you do not suffer, but the haunting quality that fundamentally you are in trouble is removed. It is like removing a splinter. It might Template:Wiki, and you might still feel pain, but the basic cause of that pain, the ego, has been removed.

Relation to the Five Skandhas[edit | edit source]

According to the Buddhist tradition, the dukkha of conditioned states (saṃkhāra-dukkha) is related to clinging to the Skandhas. Template:Wiki scholar Noa Ronkin discusses the relation between the Skandhas (Sanskrit; Pali: Khandhas) and dukkha:

Her conclusion is that the associating of the Five Skandhas as a whole with dukkha indicates that experience is a combination of a straightforward Template:Wiki process together with the psychological orientation that colors it in terms of Template:Wiki. 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 Template:Wiki, 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 Skandhas 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 Template:Wiki of Consciousness based on the six spheres of sense. They thus become the five upādānakhandhas, encompassing both grasping and all that is grasped.'

Within Buddhist Template:Wiki[edit | edit source]

Dukkha appears frequently in Buddhist texts. Jeffrey Po explains:

Dukkha is an extremely important Template:Wiki and is central to understanding Buddhism in its entirety. It appears in the first of The Four Noble Truths and as one of The Three Characteristics of Existence. References to "dukkha" as one of Life's situations abound in many of the suttas delivered by Lord Buddha Himself as well as in numerous Buddhist philosophical and psychological thoughts.
Images-5778.jpg

The Four Noble Truths 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 Template:Wiki of "dukkha".

the first noble truth is presented within The Buddha's first Template:Wiki, Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dharma (Dharmacakra Pravartana Sūtra), as follows:

"This is the Noble Truth of dukkha: birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, Template:Wiki is dukkha, Death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, Grief and Template:Wiki are dukkha; union with what is displeasing is dukkha; separation from what is pleasing is dukkha; not to get what one wants is dukkha; in brief, The five aggregates subject to clinging are dukkha."

Texts like the Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta and Anuradha Sutta, show 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.

Within non-Buddhist Template:Wiki[edit | edit source]

Hinduism[edit | edit source]

In Template:Wiki Template:Wiki, the earliest Template:Wiki — the Template:Wiki and the Template:Wiki — are believed to predate or coincide with the advent of Buddhism. In these texts' verses, the Sanskrit word duḥkha (translated below as "Suffering" and "Template:Wiki") occurs only twice. In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, it states (in English and Sanskrit):

English Sanskrit
While we are still here, we have come to know it [(Template:Wiki).
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. 		ihaiva santo 'tha vidmas tad vayaṃ na ced avedir mahatī vinaṣṭiḥ
ye tad vidur amṛtās te bhavanty athetare duḥKham evāpiyanti
52 f260.jpg

In the Template:Wiki Upaniṣad, it is written:

English Sanskrit

When a man rightly sees,
he sees no Death, no sickness or Template:Wiki.
When a man rightly sees,
he sees all, he wins all, completely.

na paśyo mṛtyuṃ paśyati na rogaṃ nota duḥkhatām
sarvaṃ ha paśyaḥ paśyati sarvam āpnoti sarvaśaḥ

Thus, as in Buddhism, these texts Template:Wiki that one overcomes duḥkha through the development of a transcendent understanding.

Panetics[edit | edit source]

In 1986, the Journal of Humanistic Psychology published an article by Ralph G.H. Siu entitled Panetics—The Study of the Infliction of Suffering. In the abstract for the article, Sui proposed using the term dukkha as a quantitative measurement; he wrote:

After analyzing the unceasing mutual inflictions of Suffering by practically everyone and the neglect of this Template:Wiki and degenerating human deficiency by the Template:Wiki Template:Wiki, I urge the immediate creation of a new and vigorous Template:Wiki discipline, called panetics, to be devoted to the study of the infliction of Suffering. The nature, scope, illustrative contents, and Template:Wiki value are outlined. The dukkha is proposed as a semiquantitative unit of Suffering to assist in associated analytical operations.

Related publications include:

Template:Wiki[edit | edit source]

12617 n.jpg

The early Template:Wiki translators of Buddhist texts (prior to the 1970s) translated the Pali term dukkha as "Suffering" and conveyed the impression that Buddhism was a Template:Wiki or World-denying philosophy. Later translators, however, including Walpola Rahula (What Buddha Taught, 1974) and nearly all contemporary translators, have emphasized that "Suffering" is too limited a translation for the term dukkha, and have preferred to either leave the term untranslated or to clarify that translation with terms such as unease, anxiety, stress, dissatisfaction, disquietude, etc.

Template:Wiki explains:

Rich in meaning and Template:Wiki, the word duḥkha is one of the basic terms of Buddhist and other Indian religious Template:Wiki. Literally 'pain' or 'anguish', in its religious and philosophical contexts duḥkha is, however, suggestive of an underlying sense of 'Template:Wiki' or 'unease' that must ultimately mar even our experience of Happiness.

On the deepest level, dukkha suggests a basic Template:Wiki pervading all forms of Life because all forms of Life are Impermanent and constantly changing. Dukkha indicates a lack of satisfaction, a sense that things never measure up to our expectations or standards.

Sargeant (2009: p. 303) explains the historical roots of duḥkha and its antonym Sukha:

It is perhaps amusing to note the Template:Wiki of the words Sukha (pleasure, Template:Wiki, bliss) and duḥkha (misery, unhappiness, pain). The Template:Wiki 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," "Template:Wiki," 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.

According to Template:Wiki tradition, dukkha is derived from dus-kha "uneasy", but according to Template:Wiki more likely a Prakritized Form of dus-stha "unsteady, disquieted". The Sanskrit prefix 'su' is used as an Template:Wiki suggesting wholesome, high, evolved, desirable, strong and such.[web 18]

Dukkha was translated as kǔ (苦 "bitterness; hardship; Suffering; pain") in Chinese Buddhism, and this loanword is pronounced ku (苦) in Template:Wiki Buddhism and ko (苦) in Korean Buddhism, and khổ in Vietnamese Buddhism. The Tibetan (phonetic) is dukngal. In Shan, it is [tuk˥kʰaː˥] and in Burmese, it is [doʊʔkʰa̰].

Alternate translations[edit | edit source]

Translations used for dukkha in the context of The Four Noble Truths are:

Template:W

Retrieved from "https://hinduismpedia.kailaasa.org/index.php?title=Dukkha&oldid=139480"