The Way of Zen

by Alan W. Watts

The First Truth is concerned with the problematic word duhkha, loosely translatable as “suffering,” and which designates the great disease of the world for which the Buddha’s method (dharma) is the cure. Birth is duhkha, decay is duhkha, sickness is duhkha, death is duhkha, so also are sorrow and grief….To be bound with things which we dislike, and to be parted from things which we like, these also are duhkha. Not to get what one desires, this also is duhkha. In a word, this body, this fivefold aggregation based on clutching (trishna), this is duhkha.8 This, however, cannot quite be compressed into the sweeping assertion that “life is suffering.” The point is rather that life as we usually live it is suffering–or, more exactly, is bedeviled by the peculiar frustration which comes from attempting the impossible. Perhaps, then, “frustration” is the best equivalent for duhkha, even though the word is the simple antonym of sukha, which means “pleasant” or “sweet.”9