Skip to content
Unitive Knowledge Society
Search

Accents are optional; quotes find an exact phrase.

Dukkha

Suffering, unsatisfactoriness: the first noble truth, that conditioned existence cannot finally satisfy.

Also: Duhkha, suffering

Early Buddhism and the Theravāda

Dukkha is often translated as suffering, but it is wider: the pain of birth, ageing, sickness and death, the stress of change, and the subtle unsatisfactoriness of all conditioned things. It is the first of the four noble truths and one of the three marks of existence.