Dukkha
dukkha (sct. duḥkha)
The pain—not merely the declared suffering, but the constitutive dissatisfaction of all that is compounded and transient. The second of the three marks of existence and the subject of the four noble truths: pain, its origin, its cessation, the path that leads to it. Fernand Hû renders it uniformly as *the pain*.
« Toutes les agrégations sont soumises à la douleur. » Lorsqu’on est bien pénétré de ce fait, on est délivré de la douleur. C’est là la voie de la purification.
Here’s the translation, preserving the Markdown, links, italics, and symbols while aiming for idiomatic English:
The Pali word dukkha (Sanskrit duḥkha) spans a spectrum that French carves up: suffering, sorrow, dissatisfaction, unease. Fernand Hû cuts through the ambiguity and holds his line throughout the Dhammapada: it is pain, with the definite article—a nearly personified force that “follows” the inwardly corrupted man “as the wheel follows the foot of the beast that drags it.” The image opens the collection: pain is no accident that strikes, but a consequence that clings.
The term operates on two levels. First, ordinary pain—loss, mutilation, separation from what we love. Second, the mark: “All aggregates are subject to pain”—every compound, because it is impermanent, carries dissatisfaction in its very structure. It is this second level that the Four Noble Truths distill, which verse 191 lists in a single stroke: “Pain, the origin of pain, the cessation of pain, and the holy eightfold path that leads to the stilling of pain.” The origin has a name—craving—and the cessation has a way.
Not to be confused with pessimism: Schopenhauer observes suffering and escapes it only through the negation of the will, without a positive method. Dukkha is a diagnosis, not a verdict—the third truth affirms its cessation, the fourth provides the path. A pessimist does not prescribe a remedy for the “thorns of existence.”