What the Buddha Taught: Revised and Expanded Edition with Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada

by Walpola Rahula

Even the very pure spiritual states of dhyāna (recueillement or trance) attained by the practice of higher meditation, free from even a shadow of suffering in the accepted sense of the word, states which may be described as unmixed happiness, as well as the state of dhyāna which is free from sensations both pleasant (sukha) and unpleasant (dukkha) and is only pure equanimity and awareness—even these very high spiritual states are included in dukkha. In one of the suttas of the Majjhima-nikāya, (again one of the five original Collections), after praising the spiritual happiness of these dhyānas, the Buddha says that they are ‘impermanent, dukkha, and subject to change’ (aniccā dukkhā vipariṇāmadhammā).2 Notice that the word dukkha is explicitly used. It is dukkha, not because there is ‘suffering’ in the ordinary sense of the word, but because ‘whatever is impermanent is dukkha’ (yad aniccam taṃ dukkha ṃ).