It makes sense to me to use dukkha as “unsatisfactoriness” because it emphasizes that the issue is resisting the way things are or needing things to be different.
I think it makes Buddhism higher-probability to translate dukkha that way. This on its own doesn’t immediately make me confident that the original doctrines had that in mind.
For that, I’d want to hear more from Pāli experts writing articles that discuss standard meanings for dukkha at the time, and asks questions like “If by ‘dukkha’ early Buddhists just meant ‘not totally satisfactory’, then why did they choose that word (apparently mainly used for physical pain...?) rather than some clearer term? Were there no clearer options available?”
If by ‘dukkha’ early Buddhists just meant ‘not totally satisfactory’, then why did they choose that word (apparently mainly used for physical pain...?) rather than some clearer term?
Note that Wikipedia gives the word’s etymology as being something that actually does seem pretty analogous to ‘not totally satisfactory’;
The word is commonly explained as a derivation from Aryan terminology for an axle hole, referring to an axle hole which is not in the center and leads to a bumpy, uncomfortable ride. According to Winthrop Sargeant,
The ancient Aryans who brought the Sanskrit language to India were a nomadic, horse- and cattle-breeding people who travelled in horse- or ox-drawn vehicles. Su and dus are prefixes indicating good or bad. The word kha, in later Sanskrit meaning “sky,” “ether,” or “space,” was originally the word for “hole,” particularly an axle hole of one of the Aryan’s vehicles. Thus sukha … meant, originally, “having a good axle hole,” while duhkha meant “having a poor axle hole,” leading to discomfort.[12]
The word dukkha is made up of the prefix du and the root kha. Du means “bad” or “difficult”. Kha means “empty”. “Empty”, here, refers to several things—some specific, others more general. One of the specific meanings refers to the empty axle hole of a wheel. If the axle fits badly into the center hole, we get a very bumpy ride. This is a good analogy for our ride through saṃsāra.
As I heard one meditation teacher put it, the modern analogy to this would be if you had one of those shopping carts where one of the wheels is stuck and doesn’t quite go the way you’d like it—doesn’t exactly kill you or cause you enormous suffering, but it’s not a totally satisfactory shopping cart experience, either.
I find arguments by analogy etymology almost maximally unconvincing here, unless dukkha was a neologism? Like, those arguments make me update away from your conclusion, because they seem so not-of-the-correct-type. Normally, word etymologies are a very poor guide to meaning compared to looking at usage—what do other sources actually mean when they say “dukkha” in totally ordinary contexts?
There’s a massive tradition across many cultures of making sophistical arguments about words’ ‘true’ or ‘real’ meaning based on (real or imagined) etymologies. This is even dicier when the etymology is as vague/uninformative as this one—there are many different ways you can spin ‘bad axle hole’ to give exactly opposite glosses of dukkha.
I still don’t find this 100% convincing/exacting, but the following account at least doesn’t raise immediate alarm bells for me:
According to Pali-English Dictionary, dukkha (Sk. duḥkha) means unpleasant, painful, causing misery.[4] [...]
The other meaning of the word dukkha, given in Venerable Nyanatiloka written Buddhist Dictionary, is “ill”. As the first of the Four Noble Truths and the second of the three characteristics of existence (tilakkhaṇa), the term dukkha is not limited to painful experience (as “pain”, “painful feeling”, which may be bodily and mental), but refers to the unsatisfactory nature and the general insecurity of all conditioned phenomena which, on account of their impermanence, are all liable to suffering, and this includes also pleasurable experience. Hence “unsatisfactoriness” or “liability to suffering” would be more adequate renderings, if not for stylistic reasons.[6] Therefore, it can be said that dukkha is the lack of satisfaction.
Our modern words are too specialized, too limited, and usually too strong. Sukha and dukkha are ease and dis-ease (but we use disease in another sense); or wealth and ilth from well and ill (but we have now lost ilth); or wellbeing and ill-ness (but illness means something else in English). We are forced, therefore, in translation to use half synonyms, no one of which is exact. Dukkha is equally mental and physical. Pain is too predominantly physical, sorrow too exclusively mental, but in some connections they have to be used in default of any more exact rendering. Discomfort, suffering, ill, and trouble can occasionally be used in certain connections. Misery, distress, agony, affliction and woe are never right. They are all much too strong & are only mental.[7] As there is no word in English covering the same ground as dukkha does in Pali, I believe, the most appropriate translation equivalent of dukkha could be ‘stress’ (as distress and eustress).
Distress is a term of modern psychology which implies ‘great pain, anxiety, or sorrow; acute physical or mental suffering; affliction or trouble; that which causes pain, suffering, trouble, danger, etc.’ ‘It is state of extreme necessity or misfortune’, liability or exposure to pain, suffering, trouble, etc.; or danger’.[8]
The antonym of dukkha is sukha, which is agreeable, pleasant, blest. In Buddhist usage it is not merely sensual pleasure, it is the happy feeling in ordinary sense. But it is also used to convey an ethical import of doctrinal significance. The concept of dukkha necessarily includes the general insecurity of the whole of our experience.[9]
Using psychological terminology, it can be said that, sukha is the equivalent of eustress, which means a so-called positive tension or ‘good stress’. Eustress is derived from the ‘Greek eu ‘well, good’ + stress’ and means ‘stress that is deemed healthful or giving one the feeling of fulfillment[ ]’[10] or other positive feelings.
[...]
Dukkha in non-Buddhist belief-systems
Two ideas of great significance developed between the ninth and sixth centuries BCE, namely that beings are reincarnated into the world (saṃsāra) over and over again and that the result of action (karma) are reaped in future lives. This process rebirth is one of suffering (duḥkha), escape from which can be achieved through the minimizing of action and through spiritual knowledge. Patañjali (second century BCE), a systematizer of yoga practice and philosophy, states that all is suffering to the spiritually discriminating person (vivekin). This doctrine that all life is suffering is common to renouncer tradition.[13]
[...] Hinduism expects of followers accepting suffering as inevitable and inescapable consequence and as an opportunity for spiritual progress. Thus the soul or true self, which is eternally free of any suffering, may come to manifest itself in the person, who then achieves liberation (moksha).
As I have already mentioned above, that Hinduism is a complex mixture of religious movements. Concerning the relation between Ultimate Reality and evil, there are at least three major perspectives, given by (1) Vedas, (2) Upanishads and the whole corpus of pantheistic writings and (3) Epics and Puranas.
Suffering in Vedas also refers to theory of moral law of cause and effect. [...] In the hymns addressed to Varuna (Vedic god) evil is a matter of humans not fulfilling his laws or not performing the ritual properly. Often it has a moral significance, in that people are evil-minded or commit adultery. Those who commit evil deeds must repent before Varuna and try to repair their evil deeds through ritual sacrifices. In other hymns addressed to Indra, suffering or evil is personified by demons. Thus the fight against evil is a perpetual combat between personalized good and evil forces.[17]
The Upanishads ground a pantheistic perspective on Ultimate Reality and introduce karma as the explanation of evil in the world. Ignorance launches karma into action and karma brings suffering. As the manifestations and dissolutions of the world have no beginning and no end, so is karma, meaning that suffering is a part of the eternal cosmic cycle. Suffering in the present life is the natural consequence of past lives’ ignorance and it has to be endured without questioning.[18]
Hinduism holds that suffering is the fruit of karma, which goes accompanied by the inevitable shadow from personal unwholesome actions in one’s current life or in a past life. The monotheistic faiths must contemplate the problems of suffering, ill or evil within the context of god’s authority and mercy.
[...]
More detailed overview of dukkha [in Buddhism]
More comprehensive overview of what the term dukkha implies, is given in Saccavibhaṅga sutta (An Analysis of the Truths) by Sāriputta:
“Now what, friends, is the noble truth of stress? 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.
And what is birth (jāti)? Whatever birth, taking birth, descent, coming-to-be, coming-forth, appearance of aggregates, & acquisition of [sense] spheres of the various beings in this or that group of beings, that is called birth.
And what is aging (jāra)? Whatever aging, decrepitude, brokenness, graying, wrinkling, decline of life-force, weakening of the faculties of the various beings in this or that group of beings, that is called aging.
And what is death (maraṇa)? Whatever deceasing, passing away, breaking up, disappearance, dying, death, completion of time, break up of the aggregates, casting off of the body, interruption in the life faculty of the various beings in this or that group of beings, that is called death.
And what is sorrow (soka)? Whatever sorrow, sorrowing, sadness, inward sorrow, inward sadness of anyone suffering from misfortune, touched by a painful thing, that is called sorrow.
And what is lamentation (parideva)? Whatever crying, grieving, lamenting, weeping, wailing, lamentation of anyone suffering from misfortune, touched by a painful thing, that is called lamentation.
And what is pain (dukkha)? Whatever is experienced as bodily pain, bodily discomfort, pain or discomfort born of bodily contact, that is called pain.
And what is distress (domanassa)? Whatever is experienced as mental pain, mental discomfort, pain or discomfort born of mental contact, that is called distress.
And what is despair (upāyāsa)? Whatever despair, despondency, desperation of anyone suffering from misfortune, touched by a painful thing that is called despair.
And what is the stress of association with the unbeloved? There is the case where undesirable, unpleasing, unattractive sights, sounds, aromas, flavors, or tactile sensations occur to one; or one has connection, contact, relationship, interaction with those who wish one ill, who wish for one’s harm, who wish for one’s discomfort, who wish one no security from the yoke. This is called the stress of association with the unbeloved.
And what is the stress of separation from the loved? There is the case where desirable, pleasing, attractive sights, sounds, aromas, flavors, or tactile sensations do not occur to one; or one has no connection, no contact, no relationship, no interaction with those who wish one well, who wish for one’s benefit, who wish for one’s comfort, who wish one security from the yoke, nor with one’s mother, father, brother, sister, friends, companions, or relatives. This is called the stress of separation from the loved.
And what is the stress of not getting what is wanted (yam pi icchaṃ na labbati)? In beings subject to birth, the wish arises, ‘O, may we not be subject to birth, and may birth not come to us.’ But this is not to be achieved by wanting. This is the stress of not getting what is wanted. In beings subject to aging… illness… death… sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair, the wish arises, ‘O, may we not be subject to aging… illness… death… sorrow lamentation, pain, distress, & despair, and may aging… illness… death… sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair not come to us.’ But this is not to be achieved by wanting. This is the stress of not getting what is wanted.”[32]
The bailey of dukkha is that it’s really bad—like physical pain. And the older texts seem to generally embrace, indeed presuppose, this bailey—the whole reason these sentences sound radical, revolutionary, concerning, is that they’re saying something not-obvious and seemingly extreme about all ordinary experience. Not that it’s literally physical pain, sure; but there’s a deliberate line being drawn between physical pain, illness, dysfunction, suffering, badness, etc. and many other things.
My intuition is that these lines would have hit very differently if their first-pass meaning in the eyes of Sanskrit- or Pali-speakers had been “Birth isn’t totally satisfying, aging isn’t totally satisfying, death isn’t totally satisfying...”
(I can much more easily buy that ‘physical pain’ is the obvious surface meaning for initiates, the attention-grabbing Buzzfeed headline; and something like ‘not perfectly satisfying’ is the truly-intended motte, meant for people to come to understand later. But in that case the etymology arguments are totally backwards, since etymology relates to common usage and not ‘weird new esoteric meaning our religion is inventing here’.)
If by ‘dukkha’ early Buddhists just meant ‘not totally satisfactory’, then why did they choose that word (apparently mainly used for physical pain...?
I’m willing to believe, based on the totality of the Buddha’s message, that he meant dukkha as “resisting how things are/wanting them to be different,” i.e. being unsatisfied with reality. Look at our own word “suffering” in English. Today it connotes anguish, but it also means “enduring” or “putting up with.” A word like “unsatisfied” in English has a mild connotation, but we could also say something like “tormented by desire” to ramp up the intensity without fundamentally changing the meaning.
I think even in current english there is an idiom for pain. Ie “”It pains me that I don’t have food” vs “I am hungry”. One variant of the claims is that there is way to be food-poor that is positive “It delights me that I don’t have food” or just “I don’t have food”.
I think it would pretty hard to translate words like “annoying,” “irritating,” etc to a very foreign audience without making reference to physical pain. It’s hard to infer connotations or intensity when looking at those older writings.
It makes sense to me to use dukkha as “unsatisfactoriness” because it emphasizes that the issue is resisting the way things are or needing things to be different.
I think it makes Buddhism higher-probability to translate dukkha that way. This on its own doesn’t immediately make me confident that the original doctrines had that in mind.
For that, I’d want to hear more from Pāli experts writing articles that discuss standard meanings for dukkha at the time, and asks questions like “If by ‘dukkha’ early Buddhists just meant ‘not totally satisfactory’, then why did they choose that word (apparently mainly used for physical pain...?) rather than some clearer term? Were there no clearer options available?”
Note that Wikipedia gives the word’s etymology as being something that actually does seem pretty analogous to ‘not totally satisfactory’;
As I heard one meditation teacher put it, the modern analogy to this would be if you had one of those shopping carts where one of the wheels is stuck and doesn’t quite go the way you’d like it—doesn’t exactly kill you or cause you enormous suffering, but it’s not a totally satisfactory shopping cart experience, either.
(Leigh Brasington also has a fun take.)
I find arguments by
analogyetymology almost maximally unconvincing here, unless dukkha was a neologism? Like, those arguments make me update away from your conclusion, because they seem so not-of-the-correct-type. Normally, word etymologies are a very poor guide to meaning compared to looking at usage—what do other sources actually mean when they say “dukkha” in totally ordinary contexts?There’s a massive tradition across many cultures of making sophistical arguments about words’ ‘true’ or ‘real’ meaning based on (real or imagined) etymologies. This is even dicier when the etymology is as vague/uninformative as this one—there are many different ways you can spin ‘bad axle hole’ to give exactly opposite glosses of dukkha.
I still don’t find this 100% convincing/exacting, but the following account at least doesn’t raise immediate alarm bells for me:
The bailey of dukkha is that it’s really bad—like physical pain. And the older texts seem to generally embrace, indeed presuppose, this bailey—the whole reason these sentences sound radical, revolutionary, concerning, is that they’re saying something not-obvious and seemingly extreme about all ordinary experience. Not that it’s literally physical pain, sure; but there’s a deliberate line being drawn between physical pain, illness, dysfunction, suffering, badness, etc. and many other things.
My intuition is that these lines would have hit very differently if their first-pass meaning in the eyes of Sanskrit- or Pali-speakers had been “Birth isn’t totally satisfying, aging isn’t totally satisfying, death isn’t totally satisfying...”
(I can much more easily buy that ‘physical pain’ is the obvious surface meaning for initiates, the attention-grabbing Buzzfeed headline; and something like ‘not perfectly satisfying’ is the truly-intended motte, meant for people to come to understand later. But in that case the etymology arguments are totally backwards, since etymology relates to common usage and not ‘weird new esoteric meaning our religion is inventing here’.)
I’m willing to believe, based on the totality of the Buddha’s message, that he meant dukkha as “resisting how things are/wanting them to be different,” i.e. being unsatisfied with reality. Look at our own word “suffering” in English. Today it connotes anguish, but it also means “enduring” or “putting up with.” A word like “unsatisfied” in English has a mild connotation, but we could also say something like “tormented by desire” to ramp up the intensity without fundamentally changing the meaning.
I think even in current english there is an idiom for pain. Ie “”It pains me that I don’t have food” vs “I am hungry”. One variant of the claims is that there is way to be food-poor that is positive “It delights me that I don’t have food” or just “I don’t have food”.
I think it would pretty hard to translate words like “annoying,” “irritating,” etc to a very foreign audience without making reference to physical pain. It’s hard to infer connotations or intensity when looking at those older writings.