Suffering

Suffering (Skt. duḥkha; Tib. སྡུག་བསྔལ་, dukngal, Wyl. sdug bsngal) is the first of the four truths of the noble ones taught by the Buddha in his first teaching:

What is suffering? It is the pain that accompanies birth, growing old, falling sick, and dying. It also includes the suffering of meeting the unpleasant and parting from the pleasant. Not finding what is being sought is also suffering. In short the five perpetuating aggregates are suffering. This is what we call suffering.

—Lalitavistara Sutra

Subdivisions

In the quote above, eight types of suffering are identified; namely the sufferings of:

• birth,
• old age,
• sickness,
• death,
• meeting what is unpleasant,
• parting from what is pleasant,
• not finding what is being sought, and
• the five aggregates.

The noble eightfold path, which is part of the truth of the path, is taught as an antidote to these eight types of suffering.

These eight types of sufferings can also be condensed into three:

1. suffering of suffering (Skt. duḥkha duḥkhatā; Tib. སྡུག་བསྔལ་གྱི་སྡུག་བསྔལ་, Wyl. sdug bsngal gyi sdug bsngal)
2. suffering of change (Skt. vipariṇāma duḥkhatā; Tib. གྱུར་བའི་སྡུག་བསྔལ་, Wyl. 'gyur ba'i sdug bsngal)
3. all-pervasive suffering of conditioning (Skt. saṃskāra duḥkhatā; Tib. ཁྱབ་པ་འདུ་བྱེད་ཀྱི་སྡུག་བསྔལ་, Wyl. khyab pa 'du byed kyi sdug bsngal)

Alternative Translations

• frustration
• stress (Jon Kabat-Zin)

Further Reading

• Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher (Boston: Shambhala, Revised edition, 1998), pages 78-92, describing the sufferings of the human realm.