" (...) 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. (...) "
____________
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