What the Buddha Knew about Dukkha that We Don’t
Over time, the meanings of words change and evolve. This appears to have happened with the word “dukkha.” We now have evidence that “dukkha” meant something a bit different — and a bit more specific — during the era the Buddha was using the word.
Obviously, the change in meaning cannot be big; otherwise, what the Buddha was recorded to have said about dukkha would probably no longer make sense to us. But a more precise definition of the term would help us better understand what the Buddha meant. We could sure use that help, because the English translations for “dukkha” are unsatisfactory. That this should be so is delightfully ironic, as one of the possible translations for “dukkha” is “unsatisfactoriness.” The most common translation is “suffering.” It is also translated as “stress.”
Those translations all sort of work; however, sometimes the Buddha used “dukkha” in ways that don’t quite fit any of the proposed translations. New research shows “dukkha” meant something more precise than these words. “Dukkha,” as the Buddha used it, meant “instability and the negative consequences of instability.”
The received understanding of “dukkha” as “suffering” captures the part about the negative consequences — suffering, stress, unsatisfactoriness — but misses the specific cause of those negative consequences…
