Transcription from online discourse recorded Jan 15 2018
Today I would like to talk about and attempt to clarify one of the central concepts in Buddhist discourse, the idea of Dukkha. In part because it's commonly misunderstood. Dukkha is very central to the Buddha's teaching and it's one of those words that is illusive of an exact translation. It's most commonly translated as suffering.
So we get the 4 noble truths which all contain the word Dukkha, translated as the truth of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path leading to the end of suffering. Being so central to the teaching, the 4 noble truths taken as various expressions around suffering leads people to view Buddhism as being pessimistic or negative kind of philosophy. Suffering is not an adequate translation, it works in some context but not in others. Truth is that there is no 1 English word that works all the time. Other suggestions have been made including "stress", this is Bhikkhu Thanissaro's translation. He talks about the truth of stress, the truth of the origin of stress, and so on. Unsatisfactoryness is another one that has been suggested. It is quite a cumbersome word, but it does point up to an aspect. Imperfection is another one. Dukkha is an aspect of all conditioned things. Everything in our experience of the 6 senses, everything in body and mind, every moment, every element has as one of its features the characteristic of Dukkha. The only thing that is not Dukkha is the unconditioned (Nibbana) but everything conditioned is characterized by Dukkha.
There is said to be 3 kinds of Dukkha, there's Dukkha dukata, Dukkha viparinama and Dukkha sankata. Dukkha dukata we can say is Dukkha as Dukkha, or Dukkha per say. This is the kind that is adequately translated as suffering. Any experience of body or mind that is felt as painful. So stepping on a sharp stone and cutting your foot is clearly Dukkha dukata. It's a moment of suffering per se. There is also mental suffering, grief, a sense of loss, a sense of anguish, these are Dukkha dukata. So this Dukkha associated with unpleasant feelings.
Dukkha virparinama is the Dukkha of changeableness. And that is the kind of Dukkha that's associated with pleasant feelings. So even the most enjoyable experiences, the most pleasant objects that we encounter are Dukkha. But they are Dukkha in the sense of viparinama, which points out the aspect that they are not lasting, they fall away. But I think what is also important here is the aspect that any phenomena in the conditioned world no matter how enjoyable or blissful it might be is imperfect and ultimately unsatisfying. That the mind cannot fully be satisfied by any conditioned object. This is the Dukkha associated with pleasant feelings. That there is an aspect of Dukkha in the imperfection, in the incompleteness of pleasant moments. Dukkha sankata is Dukkha as an inherent phenomenon. So this is the type of Dukkha associated primarily with neutral feeling. That there is an inherently an imperfection, a provisional nature associated with each moment.
One of the things that is important to understand in thinking about this is that Dukkha is inherent in the objects. It's not something that we impose on reality with our mind. This is one of the ways I think in which it has been misunderstood. Some people have presented Buddhist teachings in a way that implies that the problem is entirely subjective, that the world is perfect as it is, we are just seeing it wrongly somehow. This is not the teaching of the Buddha. The Buddha taught that the conditioned realm is inherently imperfect, impermanent, breaking up, unsatisfying. These are inherent fundamentally to the object. It's not something we impose on reality with our perception. In fact not seeing this, not seeing the inherent imperfection of things is classed as a hallucination (wipalasa - meaning a perversion of view). We are seeing things wrong if we don't see them this way is flawed. This is part of the very fabric of reality. It's not a value judgment, it's not a moral judgment, it's just a statement of the way things are. The very fact of objects whether external or internal, whether sentient objects or insentient objects, the very fact that they exist, that they are manifest, that they are functional in the universe is an inherent flaw. The only way they can manifest is through partiality. It's part of the fact of being in existence. The fact of motion of change, of life, of existence, of reality, is this constant rubbing.
This is what Thanissaro means when he translates Dukkha as stress. He explains it someplace. It's actually quite a good suggestion but it's misunderstood by people - I think it unfortunate because when you hear it you think of psychological stress and he is quite clear in his explanation of why he chose stress. He says it's not in the psychological sense but in the engineering sense, stress like the stress of 2 members of a suspension bridge when you balance the stress that holds the thing up. The mechanical parts in a machine are under stress and they have to be engineered to be strong enough to take the stress because they are rubbing, wearing, pulling, pushing. This is what's meant by his use of the word stress to translate Dukkha. The elements of reality are constantly rubbing, stressing, pushing, pulling against each other and it's this activity that constitutes reality as we know it. Things would not be able to be in existence unless they were in some sense imperfect, partial, incomplete.
The expression of phenomena in manifestation is itself a kind of incompleteness, a kind of a brokenness of the totality. So this is very fundamental to the fabric of reality as we experience it. This is Dukkha. That's why we use the term conditioned reality. Perhaps the fundamental distinction is between conditioned reality and the unconditioned. The unconditioned is Nibhanna, there is no Dukkha, it's transcendent of this reality. So it's transcended the dualities of existence and non-existence, it's transcended manifestation. It doesn't experience this incompleteness, this suffering, this imperfection.
Contrasted to that is the ordinary experience of the conditioned realm (conditioned reality). Meaning that things are subject to cause and effect. That things are inherently imperfect, partial, things are inherently incomplete. Nothing exists in isolation. No phenomena, no mind moment, no being, no object, nothing can exist entirely as an isolated unit. The idea of a discrete object is just a mental abstraction that we can use to make sense of the universe. Everything only exists as reflections and results and causes. This is the web of interdependence. Dependent origination extended to infinity, that all objects are inherently dependent on other objects and the web is very complex and is actually incomprehensible in all its refinement. But it means that any particular thing that we define as a discrete object is simply a transient node in this shifting web of reality. Nothing exists from its own side. Nothing is inherently real on its own discretely. In Wihuan Buddhism (one of the schools of Chinese Buddhism) that emphasizes in particular the teachings around interdependence. One of the images they use to illustrate this is Indra's net. This is the king of the Gods Indra in his palace has as an ornament a magical net. It's a weave of very fine fibers that crosshatch each other in 3 dimension. And whenever the fibers cross at that place is a jewel, a multifaceted jewel, and if you look in the face of one of the facets of the jewel you see the entirety of the net reflected, including all the tiny jewels. If you could focus your vision on one of the reflected jewels you see the entire net again reflected in an infinite regress. Everything is reflected in everything else. At no point is it independent. This is Indra's net as is an image or representation of the interdependency of all reality. When we try to look at any discrete object in Abhidhamma we use the technical term dhamma to represent a mind moment, a discrete object. When we look at a discrete object, this is where we see the essence of Dukkha because we see it's incomplete, it's imperfect, it's only real or operative in relationship to other dhammas, to other objects. It has causes and it can itself act as a condition for subsequent arisings and it never comes to a point of completion or perfection. It's a continual turning, shifting, churning of phenomena.
The Buddha talked about 3 fundamental characteristics of reality. One of them is Dukkha, which we have been talking about. The 2nd is Anicca, which is impermanence, which is the facet of phenomena that nothing persists, everything is transient. In the Abhidhamma way of looking at things, individual dhammas the fundamental moments of reality arise and cease instantaneously. At that level of reality, no discrete object ever changes, because it simply arises and ceases momentarily. So there's a saying in Abhidhamma that motion, meaning physical motion is not possible because what we perceive as motion is simply subsequent arising in adjacent locations. The 3rd characteristic is that of emptiness, voidness, or not-self. That nothing exists from its own side. Everything is intrinsically empty of self substance. All these 3 characteristics are related, they are all aspects of the same fabric of reality as being a shifting web of interdependency. If we can transcend the conditioned realm and experience Nibhanna then in the unconditioned the characteristics of Dhukka and Avicca do not apply. But Nibhanna is also not self or void, so that is the most universal characteristic (the emptiness - sunja) because it applies to both the conditioned and the unconditioned. But if things are going to be manifest, if we are going to have a conditioned existence then it intrinsically has to impermanent and it has to be Dukkha (suffering, imperfect, or whichever aspect we want to focus on).
The Buddha built his whole teaching around this fundamental reality. He begins with the 1st noble truth which is the truth of Dukkha (Dukkha arahasanchan - the noble truth of Dukkha). He defines Dukkha in this case as birth, aging, death, sickness, lamentation, grief, despair. Covering physical and mental aspects. Being separated from what you desire and being attached to what you do not desire and finally, these 5 aggregates are Dukkha. The 5 aggregates being the body and mind, so all of reality, all of experiential reality is Dukkha. All conditioned reality is Dukkha. So with that 1st noble truth, he lays out, expresses the problem. The structure of the 4 noble truths is based on ancient Indian medical texts. The Buddha playing as he often did with conventional forms and giving them a higher meaning. So the 1st noble truth is the expression of the symptom. This is how they would lay out the medical texts. It would be symptom, causality, prognosis, and cure. So the symptom of our existence is Dukkha and the cause of Dukkha is given as craving. Which has a specific meaning in this context as craving for sense pleasure, craving for being, and craving for not being. This covers 3 realms of conditioned existence, the sense-desire realm, the form realm, and the formless. Essentially because of this mode of energy of desire in these specific modalities of desire, we come into being and we experience suffering. So this is a way of expressing that Samsara is actually something we do, it’s an activity of mind, driven by craving. We come into manifestation. To attempt to fulfill the mind with experiences either in the sense sphere or in the sphere of form or the sphere of formless it doesn't matter, there is still an underlying craving for experience. And the experiences are intrinsically imperfect, suffering, changing, dependently arisen so there is no ultimately winning position in that. In the words of the old song "it’s staying up till dawn playing Solitaire with a deck of 51". There is no winning hand.
The 3rd noble truth is the end of suffering is a transcendence and this is the prognosis. Medical texts would say either this disease you usually die, or this disease can be cured, or something in-between (this disease will leave you crippled or whatever). The prognosis here is a good one, it says it can be cured, there is an end of suffering. This is a realization of the unconditioned. It's when we stop playing the game. The expression in the original statement is "this end of suffering is experienced when craving is put aside when there is no craving then the end of suffering can be found". We have to transcend that push into manifestation.
The 4th noble truth is the truth leading is the path leading to the end of Dukkha. It lays out a method of 8 aspects. Right view, right intention/thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right energy, right mindfulness, right concentration/samadhi. This is a specific path of practice that leads to the end of suffering. This corresponds in a medical text to the section on treatment - this is what we have to do. Also regarding the 1st noble truth, the Buddha said that we should make the effort to understand Dukkha. Then with the 3rd noble truth, he said we should make the effort to experience/realize/penetrate Nibhanna, he used a different verb. This is quite significant because we cannot understand Nibhanna although we can know it in another sense. We can experience it directly. We can't encompass it with the ordinary mind and understand it but we can do that with the conditioned realm. The Buddha in fact charged us to do so, that the conditioned realm of Dukkha, Anicca ,Anatta, the realm of dependent origination, the realm of birth, death and rebirth, the realm of Kamma. This is all the conditioned realm and this is something that we can should make an effort to encompass with the mind and understand. To make sense of and to see things correctly (to see things according to reality and not otherwise) is a result of direct observation.
Methodical insight practice. Knowing the phenomena as they arise in their own nature as they actually are. And that's to see things according to their fundamental characteristics (to see the Dukkha, Anicca, Anatta). If we don't see things in this way, if we see things as perfect, as wonderful, complete in their own nature, as abiding, as permanent, as intrinsically real with their own self inherent substance. This is classified as hallucination or perversion of view (which is probably a more literal way of saying it - wipalasa are seeing things wrongly, so being corrupted in view). It's to fall into confusion and it’s to be caught in the snares of samsara. It's to experience again and again suffering. A very real result of seeing things correctly is that one becomes more peaceful, one becomes actually happier. This is kind of one of the seemingly paradoxical aspects of the teaching. As I said at the outset people exposed to Buddhist teachings initially think that "oh it's this pessimistic sort of teaching, kind of miserable, always looking at suffering and death and grief and despair. But the result of looking at things realistically is that one is more at peace and one is happier. A very real partial result (a benefit here and now, short of the ultimate goal but a benefit here and now) is one enjoys more fully the pleasant experiences that come in ones life because all our lives are a mix of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. When we experience a pleasant occurrence, enjoyable sense objects, enjoyable thought formations, that we can experience them fully as they are and not feel disappointed. If you expect things are going to be perfect if you expect they are going to last and abide you going to endlessly suffer because they are never going to do that. But if you experience them just as they are in this moment as good enough, here they are this is good but it's not perfect, it's not going to last but it's good right now then you can enjoy it as fully as possible in the present moment and then carry on when it’s gone, you don't suffer from grief. This is one of the minor benefits, the minor fruits here and now, but it's something that is very real. You find people in Buddhist cultures generally enjoy life, they have a cheerful attitude, they are not pessimistic or gloomy as someone from the outside with no knowledge just looking at what the teachings might think. It's not a pessimistic view of life, it's a realistic one. Things are just as they are and we don't need to increase our suffering when bad things happen by having feelings of regret or unfairness or why me. That's an unrealistic addition to unavoidable suffering. Likewise, when pleasant things arise we don't need to let ourselves feel disappointed or they are not lasting enough, they just as they are. So this is understanding Dukkha in that mode of realism, of a realistic view of conditions, not looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses but seeing things as they are in their own nature.
And this will eventually set you free.
Ajahn Punnadhammo