What the Buddha Knew about Dukkha that We Don’t

The instability of the meaning of "dukkha."

Jun 20, 2024

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 research1 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: instability. Understanding this cause helps to illuminate what the Buddha was trying to say.

How was this figured out? There were three clues.

One clue we’ve had for a long time is the proposed etymology of “dukkha.” The term comes from wheelwrighting. It refers to a faulty axle or axlehole that causes the turning of the wheel to be unstable. If you’ve ever used a grocery cart with a bad wheel, you know how unpleasant and unsatisfactory this can be. Imagine riding on a horse-drawn cart with a bad axle. One would describe it as suffering — but it is suffering of a particular kind, with a particular cause.

A new clue — one that we’ve had for only a few years — is the discovery by the philologist Christopher I. Beckwith that the ancient Greek philosopher, Pyrrho, in giving a summary of his philosophy, Pyrrhonism, includes a translation of the Buddhist Three Marks of Existence into ancient Greek. No one had noticed this before, probably because Pyrrho changed the order of the Three Marks, and ancient Greek lacked close matches for the Sanskrit or Pali terms used by the Buddhists. One translation seems particularly odd. Pyrrho translated “dukkha” into Greek as “astathmēta.” “Astathmēta” means “unstable” or “unbalanced.”

If you’re not familiar with the history of ancient Greek philosophy, you may be wondering how Pyrrho got to be so knowledgeable about Buddhism. Pyrrho was a philosopher in the court of Alexander the Great. Pyrrho traveled with Alexander and his army on Alexander’s Indian campaign. Pyrrho spent about a year and a half in Taxila, India, a major center for Buddhist and philosophical learning.

Our third clue is that when this revised sense of “dukkha” is applied to statements the Buddha made using “dukkha” that don’t seem perfectly clear using “suffering,” but this revised sense of “unstable” makes them clear.

Let’s consider a few key usages of “dukkha” by the Buddha. Perhaps the most important of these is in the Three Marks of Existence. The Three Marks are not just a list. They form a logical argument. Let’s see how our understanding of the Three Marks is improved by our improved understanding of “dukkha.”

The Three Marks:

Everything is impermanent. Because everything is impermanent, dukkha arises. Because of the impermanence and dukkha (negative consequences of the instability that is the result of impermanence), nothing has self-identity.

The Four Noble Truths:

“Furthermore, monks, this is the noble truth of dukkha:
Birth, aging, sickness, and death are dukkha.
Association with what is disliked is dukkha, dissociation from what is liked is dukkha, not to get what one wants is dukkha.
In short, the five aggregates are dukkha.”

All of these things are unstable. Birth, aging, sickness, and death are all about instability. Your likes and dislikes are unstable. What you associate with and what you avoid are unstable. All of physical reality is unstable.

Here’s another usage:

“Is what is impermanent dukkha or happiness?”
“Dukkha, venerable sir.”
“Is what is impermanent, dukkha, and subject to change fit to be regarded thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self’?”
“No, venerable sir.” (Bodhi, trans., SN 22.59)

Aren’t plenty of things impermanent but pleasant? In fact, doesn’t impermanence keep things from getting boring? Surely the Buddha did not overlook these things, and surely if he did wouldn’t someone have noticed them and pointed them out? Therefore, “suffering” just doesn’t make sense here as what the Buddha meant by “dukkha.” However, if one understands “dukkha” as “unsatisfactory due to instability,” what the Buddha said makes perfect sense.

For more details about the research that is the topic of this article, see:

Jonathan C Gold, Pyrrho’s Buddha on Duḥkha and the Liberation from Views, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 91, Issue 3, September 2023, Pages 655–679, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae001

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