Change A.:
The canon depicts the Buddha as saying that he taught only two topics: suffering and the end of suffering.
That's only if one inclines to translate the word
dukkha as "suffering," and not, as Fitter Stoke once suggested in a thread, as the wider more inclusive idea of "dissatisfaction" in whatever form it is to be found.
Better to leave the word untranslated in that quotation so as not to imply a narrowing of meaning down into one aspect or another of what has been translated as either "suffering" or "stress" in modern translations.
On the other hand, I find the idea expressed that "you do not come to the full elimination of suffering [
dukkha], but only an increasingly refined understanding," to be closer to reality in that while there are things going on that are productive of the implication of
dukkha in one's experience, it is in the "not minding" aspect of one's approach to such that the effect of
dukkha is attenuated, if not eliminated.
To clarify that last, I recently read a quotation by someone who described his reaction to a
dukkha-like situation as: "The trick is in not minding it as it is happening." With the implication being that one does not personalize the event ("Oh,
I am suffering so much!"), but rather observes it as though outside it.
I find in my own experience when out running in the winter desert, the cold (which I'm not used to, having been raised in this temperate climate) is an unsatisfactory condition to have to endure for the duration of my run (1 mile). And yet in recent years I have found that "not minding" the cold produces less dissatisfaction during my run than it previously used to. I allow the body to "become one with" the cold, so to speak (yeah, I know it sounds
Kung-fu-ish to say) so as not to trouble the mind while running. That doesn't mean that after the run that I still don't relish the warmth of indoors. It just means that for the duration of the run, I don't let it bother me and endeavor to meld into it (to accept it) "as it is."