In Buddhism, dukkha (or duhkha) refers to the "truth" that life is unsatisfactory, even miserable. The word comes from Sanskrit. Dukkha is part of the Four Noble Truths:

''All of life involves dukkha.
" It will not be persuaded by any pleading of misery to let go of us. If we say to a human teacher, "I don't feel well . . .," the teacher may reply, "I am very sorry, but if you want to go home, then you must go." If we say to dukkha, "Look, I don't feel well . . . I want to go home," dukkha says, "That's fine, but I am coming along." There is no way to say goodbye to it unless and until we have transcended our reactions. This means that we have looked dukkha squarely in the eye and see it for what it is: a universal characteristic of existence and nothing else. The reason we are fooled is that because this lfe contains so many pleasant occasions and sense contacts, we think if we could just keep this pleasantness going dukkha would never come again. We try over and over again to make this happen, until in the end we finally see that the pleasantness cannot continue because the law of impermanence intervenes. . . . So we continue our search for something new, because everybody else is doing it too."

The other three Noble Truths explain the origins of dukkha; the means of eliminating Dukkha, is known as the Noble Eightfold Path. Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha repeatedly stated that the only purpose of Buddhism is to seek the cessation of dukkha. He refused to speculate about the metaphysical implications of this philosophy.

duhkha A Buddhist term, rendered into English as sorrow, suffering, affliction, pain, anxiety, uncomfortableness. (Skt. duḥkha; Tib. sdug bsngal; Pali dukkha). Its literal meaning is closer to out of joint or dislocation. It is the first of the Four Noble Truths, and in Yogacara analyses, refers to conditioned existence, or contaminated dharmas (āsrava-dharma); manifest existence, etc. There are lists of two, three, four, five, eight, and ten categories; the two are internal, i. e. physical and mental, and external, i. e. attacks from without. The four are birth, growing old, illness, and death. The eight are these four along with the pain of parting from the loved, of meeting with the hated, of failure in one's aims, and that caused by the five skandhas.

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