Feeling pain* is not Dukkha. There is no Dukkha that is not preventable. The Buddha’s teachings is to uproot Dukkha. Reduce or avoid “suffering” can be easily achieved with therapy…
A question to think about:
But, what about being “terrible” have to do with trying to avoid it? Your answer circulates around the problem. We avoid it because it’s is painful, and pain is terrible. But, why is that an option in the first place? I’m not questioning you just for you to answer, but more like to recommend a kind of questioning, one where you are always questioning your assumptions in the first place.
What is this resistance you are talking about? Is this only with pain? What about feelings, thoughts, perceptions? Is this only with unpleasant experiences? What about pleasant experiences, pleasant pressures on you? Should you just allow yourself to engage in it, without resistance?
All conditioned phenomena are dukkha including physical pain. Birth is dukkha, old age is dukkha, sickness is dukkha… If you are born then you will experience physical pain. The only way to prevent physical pain is to not be born.
“Reverend, there are these three forms of suffering. The suffering inherent in painful feeling; the suffering inherent in conditions; and the suffering inherent in perishing. These are the three forms of suffering.”
SN38.14
SN52.10 talks about physical pain (sārīrikā dukkhā vedanā) and not having it occupy one’s mind.
MN2 and elsewhere to discusses both enduring and using as means for overcoming physical pain and discomfort.
“Sister, when there’s an eye, the perfected ones assert that there is pleasure and pain. When there’s no eye, the perfected ones don’t declare that there is pleasure and pain. When there’s an ear … nose … tongue … body … mind, the perfected ones assert that there is pleasure and pain. When there’s no mind, the perfected ones don’t declare that there is pleasure and pain.”
SN35.133
The faculty of pain (dukkhavedaniya) arises dependent on a contact to be experienced as painful. When in a state of pain, you understand: ‘I’m in a state of pain.’ With the cessation of that contact to be experienced as painful, you understand that the corresponding faculty of pain that had arisen ceases and stops.
SN48.39
If we say that pain is Dukkha we come to the awkward conclusion that the Buddha and the Arahants are suffering. Since they are NOT suffering, it would make more sense to think that suffering is on the level of the attitude towards pain, for example.
Yes and no.
It’s true that a Buddha or arahant have no self sense, so there is no sense that “I am suffering.” There’s no identification with any experience, so mental suffering has ceased.
That doesn’t mean that physical dukkha (sheer pain) and experiences of the senses and aggregates have ceased. So, until the final death, some dukkha remains.
SN36.6:
" It’s like a person who is struck with an arrow, but was not struck with a second arrow. That person would experience the feeling of one arrow.
In the same way, when a learned noble disciple experiences painful physical feelings they don’t sorrow or wail or lament, beating their breast and falling into confusion. They experience one feeling: physical, not mental.
They’re called a learned noble disciple who is detached from rebirth, old age, and death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress. They are detached (visaññutto) from suffering, I say.
This is the difference between a learned noble disciple and an unlearned ordinary person."
So mere existence, the mere presence of the senses and aggregates, is dukkha.
The full cessation of dukkha only ends after the final death without rebirth, Iti44.
I agree, feeling pain is not ‘dukkha’. It’s one’s reaction to pain is "suffering ". Same is true of all the ‘conditioned’ phenomenon’. It’s our reaction to it causes suffering. Non-attachment is a tool given by the Buddha helps the suffering to cease. But its tough to acquire that skill. Some may succeed and some may not succeed in a lifetime depending upon the efforts put in. Thanks. Namo Buddhay.
Wouldn’t make more sense to interpret that the sekhas (not the Arahants and beyond) are the ones who only experience one arrow? And “experience painful physical feelings” is a translation of “dukkhāya vedanāya phuṭṭho” which makes more sense as “experience unpleasant feelings”, since the physical sensation of pain is not a feeling, but a perception.
For the sekha, they don’t suffer on account of the citta, but suffer on account of the kaya. The Arahants and Buddha don’t suffer at all. They are free from suffering completely, not partially.
That is a big claim and that is your viewpoint. How can you be so sure? How do you know?
It would be helpful if you could share the sutta reference that supports your claim.
How did you come to this conclusion? And how are you going to use this understanding?
Just imagine how convenient it would be for a serial killer to believe this. Since pain is not suffering so they can just inflict pain on other people.
I guess it’s true in masochism. The more pain the better. So it depends on what kind of truth you’re practising. 
Well if that’s how you wish to interpret it…
SN 36.6 in its entirety makes it clear that non-awakened ones experience two arrows and awakened ones experience one.
Since I think we agree that the aggregates and senses are still present and functioning for awakening ones, and since they’re conditional, and since the Buddha said, " **What’s impermanent is suffering.**Yad aniccaṁ taṁ dukkhaṁ; (SN22.45), and since in hundreds of suttas the Buddha taught that the senses and aggregates are dukkha… then their mere presence is a residue of dukkha that cannot cease until after the final death without rebirth.
I trust that what the Buddha said is true, and nonetheless, this is not a matter of knowing, but of definition. If one suffers, one is not an Arahant, one is not freed from suffering, one is still liable to suffer. We can revisit the Four Noble Truths, in the first discourse, to come to this conclusion:
Now this is the noble truth of suffering.
Rebirth is suffering; old age is suffering; illness is suffering; death is suffering; being coupled with the disliked is suffering; separation from the liked is suffering; not getting what you wish for is suffering. In brief, the five grasping aggregates are suffering.
So, what is suffering is the five-grasping-aggregates, or to be more precise is to experience the world through the five-grasping-aggregates. The Arahants experience the world through the five aggregates, so they don’t suffer. If the Buddha, who reached the goal by his own words (after all, he didn’t said that the goal is reached only when someones die after achieving Nibbana), is not free from suffering, so freedom from suffering is not the goal of the Path, right?
This conclusion reinforces the whole point of the place of ignorance. We think that suffering is out there, in the things. And they attack us, the subject. But, feeling, perceptions, they are just there in the world. They are part of the world. The suffering is on the attitude towards the experiences, that is, in the grasping of that experience, of that aggregate.
I’m sorry, this is not a proper argument… If the serial killer, by some miracle, is so well versed in the Buddha’s teachings and is preocuppied to only kill people that don’t suffer, they would know that a person who is not an Arahant still suffers, and will suffer when pain is inflicted. This would limit their profile to only Arahants, but they would have to acquire right view to be very sure who is an Arahant or not. And, by then, they would already have given up on being a serial killer, so, it is indeed very convenient for a serial killer who have this criteria to adopt this view… What a strange serial killer, though! 
The Buddha uses the term ariya-savaka to describe someone who only experiences one arrow. Although it does not specifies if Arahants are in this list or not, there are plenty of suttas where the Buddha still uses the same term ariya savako, but one can clearly see (by the assumptions) that the Buddha is talking about the sekhas, without including the asekhas. As I pointed out in this comment, Dukkha is the five grasping aggregates, which the Arahants does not possess, so they don’t experience Dukkha.
The Buddha suffered from back pain. He is still a Buddha.
And Sabbe sankhara dukkha. Physical pain is a sankhara, therefore pain is dukkha.
There doesn’t need to be possession to experience them – and they are dukkha.
You can look up dukkha dukkhata.
I don’t deny that he experienced pain, nor that Arahants don’t experience pain. My point is that feeling pain is not suffering. You still need to answer my point: the Buddha and Arahants said they reached the goal, so the goal is not to be free from suffering? If pain is suffering, if an Arahant have a biological condition where they can’t feel pain can we say that he suffer less than the Buddha?
And my point is that experiencing them with possession is what Dukkha is. Not my point, actually. The Buddha literally says that everytime he explains the 4NT.
[…] one’s experience of pain is not the reason for one’s suffering. It is rather the presence of craving, in one’s experience, that suffering is there. As long as this remains the case, one will be a “victim” of one’s own feelings, be they pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
These topics end up distinguishing different Buddhist schools of thoughts. 
In discussions like this, it can be difficult to preserve the truth and display humility since it deals with the fundamental point of the Buddhist path, on what is meant to overcome suffering.
And we all like to think we understand it! 
For example, this view:
— is the view of many schools.
Likewise is this:
Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu, an interesting Theravādin monk with Zen influenes, has this to say:
Birth, aging, sickness, and death are not dukkha unless grasped as “I” or “mine”; in the arahant there is “no Dukkha at all.”
Thanissaro Bhikkhu likewise has:
Other discourses make the point that the problem isn’t with body and feelings in and of themselves. They themselves aren’t suffering. The suffering lies in clinging to them. In his definition of the first noble truth, the Buddha summarizes all types of suffering under the phrase, “the five aggregates of clinging”: clinging to physical form (including the body), feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness. However, when the five aggregates are free from clinging, he tells us, they lead to long-term benefit and happiness.
On the other hand, Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra basically agrees with the Classical Theravādin view that’s in line with Milindapañha:
Answer. – There are two kinds of suffering: i) bodily suffering (kāyika [230a] duḥkha), ii) mental suffering (caitasika duḥkha). By the power of their wisdom (prajñābala), the holy individuals (āryapudgala) have no further mental suffering like sadness (daurmanasya), jealousy (īrṣyā), malice (vyāpāda), etc. On the other hand, because they have received a body composed of the four great elements (mahābhūtamaya) as a result of actions in their previous existences (pūrvajanmakarman), they still have bodily sufferings such as old age (jarā) and sickness (vyādhi), hunger and thirst (kṣutpipāsa), cold and heat (śītoṣṇa), etc., but these bodily sufferings are slight and quite rare.
This is why the arhats, at the moment they obtain the Path, say the following stanza:
“We do not rejoice in being reborn,
Neither do we rejoice in dying;
With mindfulness and awareness
We are waiting to leave when the time comes.”
Meanwhile, Eihei Zenji says:
“Birth and death itself is nirvana.”
So, while Orthodox Madhyamikas today argue that all three dukkhas (duḥkha-duḥkhatā, vipariṇāma-duḥkhatā, saṃskāra-duḥkhatā) are overcome for the arahats:
In addition, as an arhat we won’t experience anything that happens with the grosser elements in terms of the three types of suffering. There’ll be no suffering of unhappiness, that of ordinary happiness, or the all-pervasive suffering.
…and Zen says (who knows what Zen says! @Bion sensei? 
), this wasn’t the view of ancient Mahāyāna as attested by Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra.
And while Traditional Theravādin view is that of two-arrows, there are many Theravādin masters arguing otherwise.
There’s many ways to read certain difficult passages. We know that Buddha had a bad back, and that he said he’s overcome dukkha.
One master may say that sankhara are all dukkha, so there’s dukkha as long as there’s rebirth; meanwhile, many masters say that all sankhara can be overcome even while alive, even while being reborn.
Personally, I think it’s difficult to declare conclusively from the EBTs alone, yet we still argue.
So in the end, it might probably boil to an article of faith as to what we think it means to overcome dukkha, and unless we’re liberated beings ourselves, it’s hard to verify this faith for knowledge.
He sounds so much like Master 惠能. I guess he was influenced by that school of thought.
Hi Dogen,
So true.
I think it highlights significant doctrinal differences that can be present between schools.
Obviously, I’m positioned towards the EBTs.
For which I’ll say that I’m not alone in respecting Ven. Buddhadāsa while agreeing with a number of others that he was iconoclastic, taught that DO was all about momentary arisings and ceasings moment by moment, and denied rebirth. So…
Regarding the senses and aggregates in the Pāli suttas and AFAIK in the Āgamas, there are hundreds of times the Buddha says that each sense and each aggregate is the three characteristics, i..e. dukkha. Full stop.
I know there’s like one sutta (can’t recall it now) in which the Buddha talked about the aggregates and clinging [to] the aggregates, seemingly differentiating them. But, it’s an outlier compared to the many other examples. So I go with the balance of probabilities. 
Agree!
At the same time, I’m not sure the many suttas, including the traditional first three sermons, have “difficult” passages regarding the aggregates and their impermanence, dukkha, etc.
I mean, is there any sutta in which the Buddha directly states that anything conditional, any aggregate or sense, is dukkha-free?
I see it as discussions for the sake of possibly clarifying the Teachings. In this way, I’ve learned a lot here and in other venues, for which I’m grateful.
Welcome back, dear friend!
I find the aforementioned SN 36.6 for example, is a conflicted sutta. On one hand, it talks about:
A learned noble disciple also feels pleasant, painful, and neutral feelings.
Sutavā, bhikkhave, ariyasāvako sukhampi vedanaṁ vedayati, dukkhampi vedanaṁ vedayati, adukkhamasukhampi vedanaṁ vedayati.
Yet the verses speak of something different:
A wise and learned person does not not feel
Na vedanaṁ vedayati sapañño,
the feeling of pleasure and pain.
Sukhampi dukkhampi bahussutopi;
This is the great difference of skill
Ayañca dhīrassa puthujjanena,
between the attentive one and the ordinary.
Mahā viseso kusalassa hoti.
So, perhaps the first stanza is talking about the arahat, while the sutta talks about the noble disciple. Perhaps the sutta is back-written to the verse. I think it makes sense that the prose is talking about a noble disciple, not yet an arahat, while the verse pivots to an arahat.
I don’t see many reasons to force “The verse is talking about X dukkha, not Y dukkha” reading, here. The verse stops right there (like so many other suttas just simply talk about arahats overcoming dukkha.)
Meanwhile, Iti 44 says completely the opposite:
Their five sense faculties still remain. So long as their senses have not gone they continue to experience the agreeable and disagreeable, to feel pleasure and pain.
Tassa tiṭṭhanteva pañcindriyāni yesaṁ avighātattā manāpāmanāpaṁ paccanubhoti, sukhadukkhaṁ paṭisaṁvedeti.
It is an article of faith to declare that these two suttas, saying completely contradictory things, can be reconciled somehow. Personally, I find it a little difficult.
One possibility is that Iti 44 talks about something other than nirvana-after-death, but I also find that to be a stretch. I think it tries it’s best to specifically talk about nirvana-after-death.
So we’re left with two verses, one saying arahats feel dukkha, the other saying they don’t feel dukkha.
SN 36.11 talks about “whatever is felt is dukkha”.
But it also talks about:
But I have also explained the progressive cessation of activities.
Which is just a list of meditative attainments, and progressively deepened cessation of activities, which culminates in:
For a mendicant who has ended the defilements, greed, hate, and delusion have been tranquilized.
Nothing about death — just the Buddha abruptly talking about the meditation attainments on the subject of “All that is felt is dukkha.”
Finally, the threefold dukkha has Abhidhammic feeling all over it. Just my gut instinct.
Even if we think it might be a legit legacy of dharma, SN 45.165 makes the case that N8P should be developed for the eradication of all three types of suffering:
The noble eightfold path should be developed for the direct knowledge, complete understanding, finishing, and giving up of these three forms of suffering.”
Imāsaṁ kho, bhikkhave, tissannaṁ dukkhatānaṁ abhiññāya pariññāya parikkhayāya pahānāya …pe… ayaṁ ariyo aṭṭhaṅgiko maggo bhāvetabbo”ti.
We can agree that the Buddha & the arahats complete the N8P, but just when it is remains the discussion (probably not a good place to get into “Nirvana” discussion here again!!). So we’re back to square one.
I could go on, but I think just this brief overview could inform that why someone might raise objections to the expositions, seeing a multi-layered, heterogeneous teaching, with a mixed message on such a central, critical theme.
One could believe that there’s no contradiction, and so collapse these ambiguities into a single reading, of course.
I don’t know which one is wiser.
Likewise! I love our chit-chats, if only to showcase that these difficult subjects can be tackled with respect, and maybe we can learn something (more about the right speech and methodology, perhaps!) along the way.
Zen says that pain is empty, dukkha is empty. Release the pain, and it is just pain. Grab the pain, it becomes dukkha. The Way is easy if you just avoid picking and choosing, so stop creating dukkha.
Someone correct me, but as far as I know sukha-dukkha vedana talks about a different kind of dukkha than the Dukkha with capital D. It’s the three classifications of feelings, sukha vedāna, dukkha vedāna and neither-sukha-nor-dukkha vedana, and in many occasions the Buddha says he is feeling dukkha vedāna from his back pain.
The attitude towards experience is where suffering lies. Every interpretation of suffering that shifts where that suffering lies is not the Dukkha with capital D that the Buddha talked about.
The problem, in my view, with the interpretation with “some suffering left” is not only a matter of naming, but the conclusion that there’s a difference “in content” between the Nibbana of the Buddha alive and his Nibbana after the breaking of the aggregates. Like you said, let’s not enter the discussions on Nibbana though 
If an arahant puts his hand in the fire then he’s going to take it out really quick because they feel physical pain and leaving it there would lead to greater suffering.
Even the Buddha recoiled from what is nasty:
SN10.3
So Shaggy said to Spiky, “That’s an ascetic.”
“That’s no ascetic, he’s a faker! I’ll soon find out whether he’s an ascetic or a faker.”
Then Spiky went up to the Buddha and leaned up against his body, but the Buddha pulled away.
Then Spiky said to the Buddha, “Are you afraid, ascetic?”
“No, respectable sir, I’m not afraid. But your touch is nasty.”
The arahant continues to feel physical pain until the break up of their final body. Only then are they completely free from all suffering.
