Is it all just pain (dukkha)?

[Babs] Barbara O'Brien (ThoughtCo.com, updated July 23, 2018) edited by Wisdom Quarterly

All conditional existence is fraught with disappointment, non-fulfillment, pain, agony, tears.

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I want to KILL that child-fricken perp!

In the first sutra after his great enlightenment, the Buddha gave a teaching called the Four Noble Truths.

It's said that the Four [Ennobling] Truths contain the entire Dharma because all of the Buddha's teachings are connected to the Truths.

The First Noble Truth explains dukkha, a Pali/Sanskrit word that is often translated as "suffering," but which might also be translated as [disappointment, pain] "stress" or "unsatisfactoriness." Life [all conditional existence] is dukkha, the Buddha said.

But why is this so? The Second Noble Truth explains the origins of dukkha (samudaya). The Second Truth is often summarized as "Dukkha is caused by craving," but there's more to it than that.

Craving

"Anything Goes" (Cole Porter)

In his first teaching on the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha said:

"And this, monastics, is the noble truth of the origin of dukkha: it is craving that makes for further becoming -- accompanied by passion and delight, relishing now here and now there -- craving for sensual pleasure, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming."

The Pali [the only exclusively-Buddhist language] word translated as "craving" is tanha, which literally means "thirst." It's important to understand that craving is not the only cause of life's misery.

It is only the most obvious cause, the most evident. There are other factors that create and feed the craving, and it's also important to understand them.

  

Many kinds of craving (desire)

In his first sutra, the Buddha also described three kinds of tanha -- craving for sensual pleasure, craving for continued becoming [eternal existence], and craving for non-becoming [annihilation]. More