dukkha

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katy steger,thru11615 with thanks, modified 12 Years ago at 3/17/12 10:14 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 3/17/12 10:14 PM

dukkha

Posts: 1740 Join Date: 10/1/11 Recent Posts
From Ven. Anālayo (his PhD thesis and its resultant book Satipaṭṭhāna, the Direct Path to Realization, Windhorse Publications, 2003), pages 244-5 (hyperlinks added):
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" (...) As the Buddha himself expressly stated, a realization of the four noble truths will be accompanied by happiness, and the noble eight-fold path is a path productive of joy.3 This shows that understanding dukkha is not necessarily a matter of frustration and despair.

Dukkha is often translated as "suffering". Suffering, however, represents only one aspect of dukkha, a term whose range of implications is difficult to capture with a single English word.4 Dukkha can be derived from the Sanskrit kha, one meaning of which is "the axle-hole of a wheel", and the antithetic prefix duh (=dus), which stands for "difficulty" or "badness". 5 The complete term then evokes the image of an axle not fitting properly into its hole. According to this image, dukkha suggests "disharmony" or "friction". Alternatively dukkha can be related to the Sanskrit stha, "standing" or "abiding", combined with the same antithetic prefix duh.6. Dukkha in the sense of "standing badly" then conveys nuances of "uneasiness" or being "uncomfortable".7. In order to catch the various nuances of "dukkha", the most convenient translation is "unsatisfactoriness", though it might be best to leave the term untranslated.

The need for careful translation of the term can be demonstrated with the help of a passage from the Nidāna Samyutta, where the Buddha stated that whatever is felt is included within dukkha.8. To understand dukkha here as an affective quality and to take it as implying that all feelings are "suffering" conflicts with the Buddha's analysis of feelings into three mutually exclusive types, which are, in addition to unpleasant feeling, pleasant and neutral feelings.9 On another occasion the Buddha explained his earlier statement, "that whatever is felt is included in dukkha" to refer to the impermanent nature of all conditioned phenomena.10. The changing nature of feelings need not necessarily be experienced as "suffering", since in the case of a painful experience, for example, change may be experienced as pleasant.11 Thus all feelings are not "suffering", nor is their impermanence "suffering", but all feelings are unsatisfactory since none of them can provide lasting satisfaction. (...) "
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3 S V 441 and M I 118

4 Cf. T.W. Rhys Davids 1993: p.324; and Wijesekera 1994: p.75

5 Monier-Williams 1995: pp.334 (kha) and 483 (dukkha); cf. also Smith 1959: p.109. The corresponding Pāli terms are the prefix du (difficulty, badness), and akkha (axle of a wheel), cf. T.W. Rhys Davids 1993:pp.2 and 324. Vism 494 gives another rather imaginative explanation of the term, by relating [i[kha to space (ākāsa), which is then supposed to represent the absence of permanence, beauty, happiness, and self.

6 Monier-Williams 1995: p.1262

7 Cf. also Nānamoli 1991: p.823 n.8, who suggests "uneasiness" as a preferable rendering for dukkha when this is used as a characteristic of the whole of experience.

8 S II 53

As a not non-Buddhist person, I find this analysis helpful.
This Good Self, modified 12 Years ago at 3/17/12 11:53 PM
Created 12 Years ago at 3/17/12 11:53 PM

RE: dukkha

Posts: 946 Join Date: 3/9/10 Recent Posts
I am neither not a non-Buddhist nor a non-Buddhist. emoticon emoticon
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Bagpuss The Gnome, modified 12 Years ago at 3/18/12 2:44 AM
Created 12 Years ago at 3/18/12 2:44 AM

RE: dukkha

Posts: 704 Join Date: 11/2/11 Recent Posts
I'm currently reading this book. It's by far the most useful book I own on meditation. It's a bit of a "page turner" if you like this stuff...