dukkha
Suffering, unsatisfactoriness
[ DUK-ka ]
Seeing it in life
Dukkha includes pain, the stress of change, and the inherent unsatisfactoriness of all formations.
In short
The first noble truth; the unsatisfactory nature of conditioned existence.
The analysis
Dukkha is often translated as suffering, but the word covers a wider and subtler range than that English word implies. Three layers are traditionally distinguished: dukkha-dukkha, the ordinary pain of pain — illness, loss, grief; vipariṇāma-dukkha, the suffering of change — even pleasant experience is dukkha because it ends and its ending is felt as loss; and saṅkhāra-dukkha, the subtlest layer, the inherent unsatisfactoriness of conditioned existence itself, present even in neutral or pleasant states, simply because they are put-together and therefore unstable by nature. The first noble truth isn't a claim that life is only misery. It's a claim that even the good parts, examined closely, don't hold still.
Where it sits
Dukkha is the first of the four noble truths (sacca): what it is, what causes it (taṇhā), what its cessation is (nibbāna), and the path to that cessation (magga). It is also one of the three characteristics (lakkhaṇa) alongside anicca and anattā — impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self are read together, each implying the others.
The relief of finally paying off a balance lasts exactly as long as it takes for the next expense to appear. Not because the relief was fake — because relief built on a conditioned circumstance is itself conditioned, and conditioned things don't stay solved.
Commonly mistaken for
Pessimism, or a claim that nothing good happens. The teaching doesn't deny pleasant experience; it points out that pleasant experience is also impermanent and therefore an unstable place to locate lasting satisfaction.
A problem to be fixed once. Saṅkhāra-dukkha isn't a bad situation with a solution; it's the nature of conditioned experience, addressed by insight rather than a single corrective act.
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11); Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha VII.
Related terms