Dukkha · Pāli: dukkha; Skt: duḥkha

In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11) the Buddha names dukkha as the first noble truth and spells it out: “Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful” (trans. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu).

The Pali term is broader than the English “suffering”. Access to Insight’s glossary renders it “Stress; suffering; pain; distress; discontent”, and Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu translates it throughout SN 56.11 as “stress”, pointing to the unease and instability built into conditioned life. The tradition sorts dukkha into three, and the discourses supply the list: in the Dukkha Sutta (SN 38.14) Ven. Sariputta names “the stressfulness of pain, the stressfulness of fabrication, the stressfulness of change”, and says the practice “for the full comprehension of these forms of stressfulness” is “precisely this Noble Eightfold Path”.

Dukkha is set out as a task before it is a doctrine. SN 56.11 says of this truth that it “is to be comprehended”, which is why the teaching invites investigation rather than assent. It is also where the path starts, since the three truths that follow describe the origin of dukkha, its cessation, and the way to that cessation. Our full guide to dukkha takes each of these in turn.