SuttaCentral
Hi Bhante,
Thanks for your reply, would you mind sharing your full translation of the four noble truths? I agree that there isn’t a single perfect translation, but it’s still very nice to see different takes.
IMO it’s very important to find ways to make the translations resonate (within reasonable limits of course), because the resulting inspiration may lead to gladness, which leads to rapture, which leads to tranquility and so on 
I agree.
To me the Pali is very natural and inspiring, while many English translations are a bit dry and technical at times.
I translate for myself usually. To have English ones I resonate with, but mostly to learn: translating forces you to reconsider the Pali on various levels. Every now and then I find something new, and every time it happens to result in a more natural reading. (like this)
Here you go then, from SN56.11: (draft 
)
Now, mendicants, according to the the truth known by the noble ones, this is what suffering is: Birth is suffering. Old age is suffering. Sickness is suffering. Death is suffering. Being with what you dislike is suffering. Being apart from what you like is suffering. Not getting what you want is suffering. In short, the five fueling heaps are suffering.
And according to the truth known by the noble ones, this is what suffering’s origin is: It is the craving that leads to a next life, which, along with enjoyment and desire, looks for enjoyment in various places, namely: craving for sense objects, craving to be, and craving to be annihilated.
And according to according to the truth known by the noble ones, this is what suffering’s cessation is: It is the complete fading away, cessation, relinquishment, giving up, non-existence, and non-abiding of that same craving.
And according to the truth known by the noble ones, this is what the practice that makes suffering cease is: It is the noble eightfold path, which consists of right view, right intentions, right speech, right actions, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right unification of the mind.
Isn’t suffering a feeling? To know something is suffering we need to feel it, but dukkha is to be known via wisdom instead of felt. An alternative translation could be affliction.
Dukkha is felt. It literally means pain.
Bhante, if you don’t mind a few questions; what do you think about putting the word suffering at the start of the sentence, as in “Suffering is birth. Suffering is old age…”?
Is this grammatically permissible considering the Pali?
It seems to me that suffering has to be the subject of the sentence for it to work as a definition.
For example, if birth is suffering and one ends suffering, what is now birth? Is birth now something else than suffering or no longer suffering? (Because in this case suffering could be only one of several things that birth is, or at least this is how I understand it)
But it seems to me that if suffering is [to undergo] birth, then the end of suffering implies the end of birth (or that you must end birth to end suffering).
Or maybe this is just my own peculiar way of parsing English sentences, I’m not sure. I may be damaged from having studied math 
Edit: and thank you for sharing your draft! 
If dukkha is known by feeling it, how do we perceive the dukkha in pleasant feelings?
In Pali word order is very free. The subject is not determined by place in the sentence. Here both dukkha and jati (birth, for example), are the subject.
But dukkha is most of the times actually an adjective. Suffering is not an adjective, which is one of those things again with English.
Consider:
Now, mendicants, according to the the truth known by the noble ones, this is what is painful: Birth is painful. Old age is painful. Sickness is painful. Death is painful. Being with what you dislike is painful. Being apart from what you like is painful. Not getting what you want is painful. In short, the five fueling heaps are painful.
Now, it doesn’t sound like a definition anymore, actually… 
But then you can’t make that work well with the second truth, see. The origin of painful?
So dukkha must be treated as a noun there: the origin of pain.
This is the kind of thing: translations of single sentences are often easy, but then it’s hard to get consistency overall.
We may mean something else by definition. I think more in terms of grammatical definition. You are looking for logical definition, it seems.
In the end the Buddha was just using ordinary language, being pragmatical. He’s telling the first five monks: look, guys! these things are suffering!
The implication, of course, is that life is suffering.
By comparing it to a more pleasant feeling.
AN9.34 is nice in this context.
Bhante, with the word painful the whole paragraph seems to culminate in the ‘in short’ part. This reads very differently to me, and the point seems to be much more clear: the five aggregates are painful.
Thank you very much for that translation, and for answering my questions.
Yes, this is probably just my previous conditioning. I think I may have been primed by the noun-iness of the word suffering, because a large part of mathematics is saying ‘thing A’ is also ‘thing B’, and then having a lot of anxiety over exactly what sets of mathematical objects that applies to 
By noticing that pleasant feelings do not last.
I have some blanks in my recollection but believe there is a sutta where it states:
A pleasant feeling is pleasant when it arises and painful when it ceases.
A painful feeling is painful when it arises and pleasant when it ceases.
A neutral feeling is unpleasant when unattended to and pleasant when attended to…
The first two especially speak to the nature of dukkha in pleasant experience/feeling.
EDIT: I found the sutta. MN44
"Friend Visākha, pleasant feeling is pleasant when it persists and painful when it changes. Painful feeling is painful when it persists and pleasant when it changes. Neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling is pleasant when there is knowledge of it and painful when there is no knowledge of it.”
If we have enough mindfulness & concentration to see the appearing & disappearing of feelings, does the pleasurable aspect of the feeling even matters? I assume the meditator will be dispassionate towards all kind of feeling.
This is at the level of mindfulness (that is, with a moderate level of samadhi)
True. This is at deep level of samadhi (I might say adequate samadhi to see phenomena as it really is).
When one sees arising and passing away of the sense bases/aggregates repeatedly at that level, flowers become sights, cars honking become sounds, cushions become touch sensations, and so on for the six sense doors : - the ‘sign and the detail’ are discarded, and only the working of the doors or bare awareness ensues- this is what the mendicant Bahiya was taught. This is simply ‘contact’ (phassa) and the five aggregates arise before and after it. Name/Form and consciousness arise before- feelings, indentification and fabrications, after contact (phassa).
It takes some experimentation to exactly ‘find’ these in one’s own experience…
Because of the level of samadhi present, feeling (vedana) no longer entraps us with it pleasantness or blinds us with its unpleasantness or lulls us into a false security with its neutral-ness. We come to see its arising. We come to see it middle and its passing away. Its ‘structure’ becomes clear- and the more we see it arising and passing away, it becomes boring, becomes dulling, becomes apparent there was nothing worth clinging to or become averse to. It was empty of the promise it held- only a mirage like in the phena sutta (which has a different simile, for a different purpose, but showing it was insubstantial ). It is also not self, as it arises due to causes -I’m not doing it.
Many will find it hard to describe why pleasantness is dukkha- it is because that truth cannot be reached by contemplation alone and requires samadhi; wielded in a particular manner so as to enable these phenomena to be revealed.
with metta,
Equanimity is the goal. For me the practice is usually about noticing how and when feelings arise, and then how I react, ie how and when craving and aversion arise.
Dispassion is one of the nibbida, viraga (dispassion), nirodha triad which is used to describe the progress of insight in the EBTs.
Interestingly equanimity (upekkeha) is not used in EBTs for insight processes. Though it could be argued that it is the end result.
with metta
I think this turning away from the conditioned and towards the unconditioned is an important part of the process. One way I relate to this is the sense of moving away from movement, and towards stillness.