According to Buddhist scholar Damien Keown, the Buddha said, “What, O Monks, is the Noble Truth of Suffering? Birth is suffering, sickness is suffering, old age is suffering, death is suffering. Pain, grief, sorrow, lamentation, and despair are suffering. Association with what is unpleasant is suffering, disassociation from what is pleasant is suffering. Not to get what one wants is suffering.”

Dukkha is most often translated as suffering and certainly it refers to suffering. The world that the Buddha lived in was a world that knew warfare, great poverty, and disease. Life expectancy was short and infant and child mortality was great. One could not progress spiritually if the truth of this suffering and one's own mortality remains denied. By extension, the suffering of others cannot be denied either.

But dukkha goes beyond these obvious forms of suffering of aging, sickness, and death. It also refers to a pervasive dissatisfaction that colors every moment of life. The Buddha described this aspect of dukkha by the very choice of dukkha as the term. “Du” of dukkha means “bad,” and “ka” means “wheel.” The Buddha invoked the metaphor of a bad wheel to capture the essence of dukkha. It is more than suffering. It describes an oxcart whose wheel is off its axle, biasing every movement of the cart, a wheel that is broken and out of true, or a wheel that is missing a chunk. That bumpy dissatisfaction or sense that things are not right captures the more impor tant aspect of dukkha. Buddhism is notorious for the statement, “Life is suffering.” But this is misrepresentation and a caricature of the importance of dukkha and paints a bleak picture. However, the notion of dukkha as pervasive dissatisfaction suggests that much unhappiness is self-inflicted. It comes from misapprehending the nature of reality and the self. Still sounds like bad news, right?

Well, think about it this way. If dukkha is self-inflicted, there is a way out of this misery, and it is to this possibility that the remainder of the Four Noble Truths point.

This sense of being “off” can even show up in pleasant experiences because of a nagging awareness that they will change; you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Dukkha is like a background radiation that permeates every experience, even the joyous ones. Even if you are free from illness and enjoy wealth and power, like Siddhartha, you may find that something is missing; you may feel a sense of lack. Happiness is vulnerable when it is dependent upon external events going a certain way. If your sense of contentment is contingent upon things you cannot control, such as the opinions and behaviors of others, then you are vulnerable to dukkha. For example, you may be looking forward to an evening out with your partner. You enjoy a fantasy of how the evening will go, what you will order, how you will feel engaged in brilliant conversation. These fantasies make you happy and fill you with a sense of expectation. They also make you vulnerable. Suddenly the phone rings and your partner must beg out of the plans, because of too much work at the office. If you remain attached to the fantasy, you may now feel let down, even angry. The happiness-producing fantasy was contingent upon things going a certain way, and when they didn't, there was no more happiness.

The Three Marks of Existence

Dukkha is the first of the three marks of existence. Dukkha is descriptive; it's the diagnosis. The second two marks are the culprits; they are part of the diagnosis. Anicca is best translated as “impermanence.” Things are constantly changing. If you don't appreciate this, you suffer because you are not in touch with the actual nature of reality. Stephen Batchelor put it eloquently when he said, “It's transitory, it's impermanent, it's constantly moving on, it's unpredictable, every moment is an opening to another possibility. Nothing stands still, nothing is fixed, there is no kind of ultimate ground that doesn't move, that is unconditioned. Everything is within this extraordinary rhythm and flow of life itself.”

Anatta is the next culprit, and while not difficult to translate, it is difficult for the Western mind to grasp. It means “no self” or “not self.” Anatta suggests that what appears to be “me” is not something solid, enduring, or stable. Whatever this “me” is is also subject to anicca. It's always changing from one moment to the next and only gives the appearance of solidity. According to many religions, there is an everlasting identity known as the soul. The soul outlives the body and the mind and continues after earthly life is over. The Buddha rejects the idea of an eternal soul. Whatever this self appears to be it is not solid and is always changing. On the one hand, this may strike you as a frightening proposition. On the other hand, the Buddha's path is one of personal salvation through your own efforts. The Buddha's teachings are also pragmatic and don't require belief in concepts such as an afterlife. The marks of impermanence and no-self will be explored further in the Second Noble Truth.

Self is a process just like everything else. And furthermore, what you take to be yourself is a metaphor for identity in that this moment is based upon previous similar moments from the past or future similar moments from an anticipated future. This process of comparison gives rise to a solid self or an ego that is more like a thing than a process. A lot of energy is invested into this ego self. It must be identified and protected; self-esteem must be enhanced and it is often the subject of obsession. Think of all the energy you will have once you give up all that protection for something that doesn't really exist. As the poet Wei Wu Wei noted,

The Three Poisons

The Three Poisons (kleshas) are greed (craving, desire, thirst), hatred (aversion, aggression), and delusion (ignorance). The unawakened mind is inextricably intertwined in these three poisons. They arise out of misunder-standing the three marks of dukkha, anicca, and anatta and, in turn, greed, hatred, and delusion are the primary causes of dukkha. In going through the process of awakening, you greatly reduce your involvement with these poisons, and it is by reducing these poisons that you can progress toward the awakened mind.

Each of these concepts is intimately bound up with one another. This is the beauty of the Buddha's teaching and it points to a profound understanding of psychology and behavior. It's very likely that your day is filled with a variety of desires and aversions — things you want and don't want. These can be material things, sensory things, or emotional experiences. It's also very likely that you will attribute a sense of permanence to something that is not and fall into the trap of the enduring self or ego (at least once!).

The three poisons are a ubiquitous threat, and the Buddha's teaching offers antidotes for each of the poisons. For greed he suggests generosity (dana). For hatred he suggests loving friendliness (metta) and compassion (karuna). For delusion he suggests the possibility of waking up to a more accurate experience of reality.

The Five Aggregates

In order to understand the nature of the self, the Buddha broke down the individual into five groups, or five aggregates of attachment, in his second sermon at the Deer Park.

The five aggregates he named are as follows:

• The aggregate of matter (eye, ear, nose, throat, hand, etc.)

• The aggregate of feelings and sensations (sight, sound, smell, taste, thought, form)

• The aggregate of perception

• The aggregate of volitions or mental formations

• The aggregate of consciousness (response)

Each aggregate is subject to change. Your body changes constantly. If you are over forty, you know this more than most. In fact, most cells of your body change every seven years and, in fact, every atom in your body changes over about once every year. Every atom! From a physical standpoint there is nothing in you today that was in you a year ago. So, what persists? Feelings and sensations change constantly as well. Your ideas change. Your volitions change as well — volitions can be thought of as your intentions or the basis for your actions.

Volitional action changes as well. What you intend to do today will have an effect on what you do tomorrow. Or the intent with which you live your life today will affect your life tomorrow. And finally, you have consciousness (or response), which also changes constantly. You hear something with your ear and become conscious of the sound with your mind. You decide to act on the sound you hear. Your responses continually change.

Since you cannot act on that which you do not experience (you do not act on a sound you do not hear), you'll find that the fifth aggregate, consciousness, depends on all the other aggregates for its existence. The action or response you make based on the intention you had based on your perception of your senses from your body is solely dependent on each of the preceding phenomena. This is the Buddha's teaching of dependent origination.

Take a simple example: You pass by a pizzeria and your nose (body) twitches as you smell (sensation) the scent of fresh tomatoes and cheese. You think (perception), “Wow, a piece of pizza would sure taste good.” Your senses are aroused and you decide (volition) to go in to buy yourself a slice. You enter the pizzeria and put some money on the counter (response). Suddenly, a dog passes by the window of the pizza place. You see the dog and think how you should hurry home to walk your own poor dog, who has been alone since seven o'clock that morning. You head out the door toward home. You can see here that you move from sensory experience to perception to volition to response all day long — the aggregates of attachment in action.

The person you call “me” is made up of these five aggregates and nothing more. These aggregates are constantly changing. Therefore, the person you call “me” constantly changes as well. There is no fixed “me” or “I.” There is no permanent self, nothing to grab on to. The only way out of this endless cycle is to see that the perception of a fixed self is an illusion that you are attached to. Letting go of this attachment is to liberate yourself from suffering.

These five aggregates together comprise duhkha, or suffering. If you think of a river, you will notice that the river is constantly changing. You cannot see one part of the river and stop to examine it and find it as fixed. Just like the river, you are ever changing.