I’ve been thinking about this over the last few days; it seems to me that there are two ways to read the first noble truth. The first way is as an enumeration of things that are suffering, the second way is as defining dukkha (i.e. “this is what suffering actually is”).
“Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering. (SN 56.11)
In the first case, I tend to supply my own limited understanding of suffering and then try to see how birth, old age, death etc. are like that kind of suffering.
In the second case, it’s more like I’m being asked to reexamine my current understanding of what suffering really is.
Consider ‘union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering’
vs.
‘suffering is joining with what is displeasing, suffering is separating from what is pleasing, suffering is to not get what one wants’
In the latter case, it’s more clear to me why ‘in brief’ the five aggregates are suffering; getting what I don’t want, separating from what I like, not getting what I want – this is part and parcel of conscious experience. If suffering is defined by that, then it seems more evident (to me) that the five aggregates are suffering.
In addition, since the khandas are impermanent, we must always eventually experience what is displeasing, lose what is pleasing and therefore get what we don’t want. Since health and youth are impermanent, we must experience sickness old age and death. But even death is impermanent, so we get the birth again later. Taking the first noble truth as a definition of dukkha, the link between impermanence and dukkha seems more clear to me.
Someone might object to ‘life is suffering’, but would they object to ‘life invariably involves birth, old age, sickness and death; experiencing what is displeasing, losing what is pleasing and not getting what you want’?
In any case, I guess the topic of this discussion is how the first noble truth should be understood. What do you think?