“Life is suffering.”

When I talk to people about Buddhism, many assume that’s Buddhism’s central message: Life is nothing but pain and misery, and Buddhist practice gives us, at best, a way to ameliorate it a bit while we wait around for the end. If that’s your view of Buddhism, let me quickly say, “No. Buddhism isn’t like that at all, and the Buddhist texts never say that life is suffering.” In fact, in my experience, long-time Buddhist practitioners, such as the monks I’ve talked with on meditation retreats, are some of the most content and joyful people you can meet.

So what’s the real story? It’s true that suffering plays a big role in Buddhist thought. As I discussed in an earlier essay, the quest that got Buddhism off the ground—the problem the Buddhist origin story tells us Siddhattha Gotama initially set out to solve, and so precipitated his discovery of Buddhism itself—was the presence of suffering in all of our lives.

Life is Not Suffering

But there are two important clarifications to that statement, if we’re to get at why Buddhism does not say that “Life is suffering.” First, there’s a world of difference between saying “Life is suffering” and saying, “Suffering is present in our lives.” The former is rather depressing, a statement of comprehensive awfulness. (It’s also rather obviously an implausible overstatement, and if Buddhism is grounded in that, then there’s probably not much benefit to you in reading this newsletter, because widely implausible claims won’t do much to help you deal with the real challenges in your life. Fortunately for both of us, Buddhism is much more realistic.) 

On the other hand, saying “suffering is present in our lives” is, well, clearly true. At the very least, every one of us will get sick, we’ll grow old, and we’ll die. And along the way, even the luckiest of us will face moments of pain, sadness, stress, and discomfort. Those moments won’t be the whole of our lives, but they’re inevitable. Thus the presence of pain, both physical and emotional, is a baked in feature of the human condition. And yet, even with that, there’s still great joy in life, great pleasures, rewards, and delights. Buddhism doesn’t deny that. In fact, Buddhism says that if we can be more present and aware, and less bound up in the kind of thoughts and behaviors that contribute to suffering, then we can enjoy all those things more.

“Dukkha” is not “Suffering”

Here, though, I need to apologize. I’ve been saying “suffering,” but that term is misleading, and doesn’t quite get at what Buddhists mean. We tend to think of “suffering” as a kind of acute pain or intense discomfort, either physical or psychological. But that doesn’t quite capture the depth and nuance of the word “dukkha,” which is from the Pali language of the early texts. Yes, dukkha includes the obvious forms of suffering, such as pain, illness, old age, and death.  But it encompasses much more than that. At its root, dukkha refers to the fundamental unsatisfactoriness and unreliability of ordinary existence. (Translator Bhikkhu Analayo points to dukkha’s etymology in an ancient term meaning “standing badly,” noting that this “conveys nuances of ‘uneasiness’ or of being ‘uncomfortable.’”)

Here’s what the Buddha saw when he looked at the human condition: we are constantly grasping at things we think will make us happy. This might be pleasure, wealth, status, relationships. And while these pursuits can certainly bring us satisfaction, happiness, or meaning, it doesn’t last. Whatever we gain, we inevitably lose. We lurch from desire to desire, acquisition to acquisition, never finding lasting fulfillment.

Even when things are going well, there’s often a subtle undercurrent of anxiety, a sense that something just isn’t quite right. We worry about losing what we have, or not getting what we want. We’re haunted by a vague sense that we’re wasting our lives, not living up to our full potential. This is dukkha: the pervasive, existential itch we can never quite scratch.

The problem, according to the Buddha, is that we look for lasting and stable happiness in the wrong places. We seek peace and contentment in things that are inherently unstable and unsatisfying. And we do this because we fail to see reality clearly. We’re deluded by the ego, by our cravings and attachments, by our never-ending attempt to make life conform entirely to our terms.

Awareness of Dukkha

So dukkha isn’t just some remote, abstract idea. It’s a deep diagnosis of the existential dilemma we all find ourselves in, the root cause of so much of our stress, dissatisfaction, and suffering. By recognizing dukkha, we take the first step on the path the Buddha laid out, and towards a more sane, wise and peaceful way of engaging with life.

In future issues of this newsletter, we’ll explore Buddhism’s prescription for dukkha in more depth, digging into its analysis of the causes and the practical path offered for finding freedom from stress, unsatisfactoriness, and dis-ease. But for now, the invitation is simply to start paying attention, with honesty and compassion, to the ways you experience dukkha in your own life. For it is only by clearly seeing the problem that you can begin to put into practice the solution.

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