I need to explain how I see the central point about human discord. How do we translate ‘dukkha’? While it is true that ‘dukkha’ has a number of meanings, depending on its context (and that it’s so that the use of the translation ‘suffering’ has a flattening effect on the term), when it comes to thinking about the deepest layers of its meanings, we can find an experience-near meaning, after all; one which helps clarify the personality’s functioning in relation to dying and death.
The interpretation which I prefer is that one based on the etymology found in the Pāli English Dictionary. I like it because it makes the most sense of the family of uses that the word has, across all its contexts.
The PED says that the word is made up of ‘duḥ’ plus ‘kha.’ Those mean: ‘bad’ and ‘space.’ Some think that this refers to the space at the hub of a cart-wheel. Whatever the case, we can take it to mean: a bad space. And, if you like the wheel image, it means a badly functioning centre. It’s a space that doesn’t work well. That’s helpful, I find, for understanding the Nikāya Buddha’s use of ‘dukkha.’ There is death-dukkha because we are operating from the wrong kind of space.
If we aren’t aware of the space from which we know the deathless, then our understanding of the events which we name will be skewed. Birth, ageing, illness, death, getting what you don’t want, not getting what you do want; separation from what is delightful, and the fluctuations of the five sentient processes (of form, feeling-tones, perceptions, intentionality, and consciousness) – all these can be seen in perspective, when seen from a completely satisfactory space, a non-dukkha space.
With the realisation of the deathless, we see through all these life events as not what we took them to be. So, I take the Pāli ‘maranam dukkham’ to mean: “There is death-dukkha.” Without the vision of the deathless, there can only be a distorted relationship.
There is no suggestion, as far as I know, in the texts, that the Nikāya Buddha was experiencing dukkha when he had bodily pains, or when he was dying. Dukkha is created by our wrong relationship, our reactivity. With our everyday-variety narcissism comes birth-dukkha, illness-dukkha, death-dukkha, association-with-the-unpleasing-dukkha, separation-from-the-pleasing-dukkha, not-getting-what-one-wants-dukkha, and the dukkha of clinging to our five sentient processes.
This clinging, this is worth escaping – by recognising it, entering it with mindfulness and clear comprehension, comprehending its cessation, and establishing ourselves in the way of liberated understanding. The result is more energy for life.