I’ve been talking on this blog, lately, about the occasion on which the Nikāya Buddha first shared his realisation with someone. I’ve put my translation (completed today) up here.
Several weeks after the Nikāya Buddha’s awakening, he initially wishes to share his newfound knowledge with his teachers, but he finds that they had died. Then, he thinks about his five former companions, who had practised extreme asceticism with him. They had abandoned him, when he started to take a more moderate approach. So, he sets out to find them and share his new knowledge. (Vinaya i 8-10).
The Vināya record describes how he works with them over a period of days, finding ways to convey his understanding, so that they were able to realise it for themselves. Each day, while the ‘workshop’ continued, three of them go off and beg for food, which they bring back and for the six to eat together. And, on goes the work, until Koṇḍañña is the first of the five to see the nature of reality significantly and clearly.
In my translation, I have omitted the usual convention of the ‘Four Noble Truths,’ because reputable scholars doubt the authenticity of that phrase; and, anyway, it is unnecessary for a practical understanding of the teaching on dukkha and the ending of dukkha.
I’ve left dukkha untranslated. The Pali-English Dictionary says: “Our modern words are too specialised, too limited, and usually too strong. Sukha & dukkha are ease and dis-ease (but we use disease in another sense); or wealth and ilth from well & ill (but we have now lost ilth); or wellbeing and ill-ness (but illness means something else in English).”
If you need an English term for ‘dukkha,’ to help you make the text more experience-near, then I would probably choose Thanissaro’s ‘stress.’ Speaking non-technically, dukkha generally adds up to a ‘bad trip.’
I probably owe a lot to various translations, but here I’ll mention that the noun-phrase “for the spiritually ennobled ones” I took from Peter Harvey’s translation, so that the former Four Noble Truths could have some look-in. He has a very helpful glossary, as well, for those who want to explore.
I have taken the approach that this particular sutta is not so much about lauding the Nikāya Buddha, and not even so much about presenting the truth of dukkha – its existence, its generation, its cessation, and the way of life which is its ceasing – but it particularly presents the significant and joyous, occasion of the awakening of Koṇḍañña.