Dukkha

Dukkha (Sanskrit duḥkha) is the subject of the Buddha’s first teaching, the Four Noble Truths: the truth of dukkha, of its origin in craving, of its cessation, and of the path that leads to that cessation. The word is usually translated “suffering”, but it is wider: it covers pain, the loss of what is pleasant, and the pervasive unsatisfactoriness of whatever is conditioned and impermanent.

The teaching is often compared to a physician’s diagnosis, prognosis and cure, and it is meant to be understood, not merely believed. The commentarial tradition distinguishes three kinds: ordinary pain, the suffering of change, and the suffering inherent in conditioned existence as such.

Dukkha is one of the three marks of existence, with impermanence and non-self. The three are linked: what is impermanent cannot finally satisfy, and what cannot finally satisfy cannot be claimed as a self.