The meaning of suffering in Buddhism

The four noble truths are seen as the main teaching of the Buddha, the core ideas that all other ideas relate back to, just presented in different ways.

Those truths are (roughly):

1.  that suffering or some type of dissatisfaction is an aspect of normal life (dukkha in Pali, but I won't refer to "original" concepts here throughout this),

2.  that there is a cause for it (attachment),

3.  and a resolution for it (enlightenment, although the teachings get odd on this point),

4.  and that there is a way to reach that (the 8-fold path).

image credit:  ieet.org

Lots of online references or even Wikipedia would fill in more details about all that, with the rest here just about my take on what is meant by suffering.

The concept wasn't clearly originally meant as suffering, or at least not in the same group of senses the English language expression is used.  We wouldn't really know what the original meaning is for sure for a few reasons.

Why the original meaning of "suffering" is not available:

-most notably, because use of language changed over time.

We get the most direct source references in Pali, transferred from an earlier chanted tradition, probably translated before that from a local dialect language (but again, do lots of research to get the full story of speculation about the Buddha's native language if you like).  English expressions and concepts change a lot over the course of a century, and language in general is like that, so even the Pali step alone isn't necessarily consistent, and "suffering" always was just a ballpark guess at a summary.

-context change:  specific ideas are presented within the framework of a culture-based perspective, so if a modern American says something and a modern Thai person says a nearly identical thing the different contexts still can shift the meaning a bit.  Since the Buddha was talking about ideas that may or may not have been from a mainstream religious, psychological, or "philosophical" perspective (and what philosophy means is really inconsistent over much shorter time frames) we can't have any idea about that context, or how it changed.  What we call Hinduism today, earlier versions of a diverse set of ideas, were part of that, but even today it would be hard to summarize, and completely impossible to trace back to one time and place 2500 years ago.

-interpretation change:  Buddhism interpreted today, and 50 years ago, and 100 years ago are all relatively different things, and you couldn't simplify it down to one interpretation per a time anyway.  It would be interpreted as religion by one, psychology by another, as differing forms of philosophy by others, mixed with other ideas, rituals, practices, or cultural aspects by some, and so on.


All that said what follows will be my take, not any other objective reconstruction.  I won't bother to defend it against other main interpretations to save time and avoid endless regression of possible ideas.  To me it's as well not to pin this down to one specific concept because to me part of Buddhism is figuring out what the concepts and guidance and review process means related to your own life and perspective (worldview), but all the same for the sake of discussion I will.

My take on "suffering":

I think this really works best as a family of concepts, to be sorted out by the individual related to their own experience.  To keep it unified and general "dissatisfaction" might work but as I see it for different people lots of different specifics might apply:  stress, unfulfilled desire, unhappiness, even shades of other less general and specific emotions and statuses like anger, hatred, jealousy, etc.  To some extent these could be broken down as the causes of some feeling of discontent (the way the concept is framed in that original structure) and then the way it is exhibited in a particular circumstance (those emotions or perspectives).

image credit www.perasonaltao.com

In some interpretations people have tried to turn it around and see how a goal of happiness works instead.  That's backwards from the original structure, right, but it still might work, or at least could be informative.  All the same in this particular teaching the Buddha was saying you can remove a perspective element that causes unhappiness (or whatever interpretation), and what you are left with is happiness.  But why put it that way, backwards?

One reason proposed by some is that the structure is set to match what a doctor does with an illness or disease:  identify the condition, identify the cause, propose a cure, then implement it.  Also it may be informative to turn around the pursuit of happiness in the first place, since in a way it's obvious that seeking it directly couldn't work.  It's more typical for us in modern times and Western culture to associate states, activities, and ownership with happiness so we might seek out all sorts of conditions related to being happy:  to eat good food, to own something, to have a good career, or financial stability, to do any activity one likes, or be in a certain relationship, and so on.  Or maybe to seek out a balance of just some of those.  In rare cases we would turn it around and look for removing obstructions (illness, job dissatisfaction, using different self-help approaches, etc.), but usually  it's the other way around.

How is the Buddha's message different than a conventional approach

So the general direction is different, not looking for happiness and related conditions, but what else is different about all this?  Actually it seems closest to either psychology or self-help, when looked at from this perspective.  In those endeavors one is looking for either a cure or at least a different approach.  Usually in other cases it's not like that; the current worldview, perspective, desires, etc. are all accepted as the starting point, essentially implicitly but there all the same.

Also the Buddha is saying this can be conducted by an individual, to some extent, leaving aside the need for external guidance, additional explanations of teachings, meditative practice guidance, etc.  It starts from ordinary perspective.  Unhappiness, or something like it, is a condition the individual is causing through their own assumptions, related to specific desires and specific views of self (which starts into other teachings a bit).

Immediately I'm reminded of posts you see on the internet that seem to echo this, but in a sense which are such different and light versions they somehow seem completely different.  People find lots of ways to say that they can be happy if they can just find contentment within themselves, and not worry about what other people say, or not embrace fear, and can control their own expectations, and so on.  So what is different here?  These teachings seem a bit more specific:  the concepts aren't completely simple and clear to us, but it doesn't seem to boil down to a half-dozen such feel-good slogans.  Also the eightfold path goes on to suggest a lot of hard work, not just a simple perspective shift, lightening up.

As my grandmother used to say, other people's complaints or problems are like water off a duck's back to her, it doesn't matter.  But that seems to only capture some of what's going on here.  The Buddha goes on to suggest re-evaluating an implicit concept of self, a personal code of morality, to take up meditative practice, and to read further in other teachings.  That's not just lightening up.

Enlightenment:  really?

picture credit:  www.highexistence.com

What about this difference; a completely different end point than a person that is just relaxed and not self-absorbed, or doesn't desire a lot of things they probably won't have, like owning a lot of things, or supermodels.  It's as hard as any other step in Buddhism to say what Enlightenment means, although of course a lot of different people drawing on a lot of teachings will do just that.  

For many it's something that will happen in a much later life, only after many lives as a monk or something such.  A little seems to get lost here because the goal sort of drops out, and the general direction with it.  Others find elements more grounded in this one life experience, but some of these in stages that relate to meditative attainment, levels of Zen meditation training and such.  If that's the actual right answer--and there may not really be one--then it only applies to people into such things.  An interesting take in Thai culture is that it is a distant goal (not in this life) but accumulating religious merit is a factor, so the religious ceremonies and good deeds and in particular alms given to monks are all practical contributions, steps towards it.

What about a more practical interpretation, what if we try to bring it back to a simple, everyday concept?  That may be out of place, arguably.  But if we try to do that it could simplify to the degree to which we can eliminate certain types of unhappiness, based on certain types of perspective problems.  In particular it might relate to desires, expectations, views of self, and relation to time, to confining experience more to immediate awareness and not getting caught in stress related to the past and present (again all dipping into other teachings).  Someone wouldn't need to be completely enlightened for that kind of interpretation to work, not a "Master" you do an apprenticeship under, not really even the Buddha.  You wouldn't really need milestones for this to work either, not to be half-enlightened, or at certain other types of markers.

Real self-awareness would relate to each person having some idea of the extent to which it was working, if not a clear understanding of further steps and specific goals.  There probably wouldn't really be a stopping point, although one might expect a leveling off of the work on such a thing, and the gains.  It would seem likely it would be ongoing, forever, a work in progress, sort of how life itself works.

Steps to Buddhist practice

This I really can't answer, of course.  There was the eightfold path, in the teaching version (summary image earlier in this entry).  It wasn't so clear someone could do all of that, although it seems to some degree following up on all parts would be required, and to some degree an individual practice may well emphasize just one part.  Without some additional reading up and information it's hard to imagine the other parts would work (for example, "practicing" only through moral practice or meditation without knowing any more background, the wisdom step).  Those are three of the eight parts of the path, by the way, so it's nothing too exotic.  I should probably drop this for now and rejoin it for more on other practices and approaches.