Dukkha - Three Patterns

Three Patterns

Within the Buddhist tradition, dukkha is commonly explained according to three different patterns or levels or categories:

Dukkha of ordinary suffering
  • Pali: dukkha-dukkha
  • Also referred to as the suffering of suffering.
  • Includes the sufferings of birth, aging, sickness, death, and coming across what is not desirable.
  • This outer level of dukkha includes all of the obvious physical suffering or pain associated with giving birth, growing old, physical illness and the process of dying.
Dukkha produced by change
  • Pali: viparinama-dukkha
  • Also referred to as: suffering of change or suffering of impermanence.
  • Includes two categories: trying to hold onto what is desirable, and not getting what you want.
  • Buddhist author Chogyam Trungpa includes the category "not knowing what you want."
  • Pema Chödrön described this type of suffering as the suffering of trying to hold onto things that are always changing.
  • This inner level of dukkha includes the anxiety or stress of trying to hold onto things that are constantly changing.
Dukkha of conditioned states
  • Pali sankhara-dukkha
  • Also referred to as all-pervasive suffering
  • This category is also identified as one of the "eight types of suffering".
  • Pema Chodron describes this as the suffering of ego-clinging; the suffering of struggling with life as it is, as it presents itself to you; struggling against outer situations and yourself, your own emotions and thoughts, rather than just opening and allowing.
  • This is a subtle form of suffering arising as a reaction to qualities of conditioned things, including the skandhas, the factors constituting the human mind.
  • This is the deepest, most subtle level of dukkha; it includes "a basic unsatisfactoriness pervading all existence, all forms of life, due to the fact that all forms of life are changing, impermanent and without any inner core or substance."
  • On this level, the term indicates a lack of satisfaction, a sense that things never measure up to our expectations or standards.

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