Is the Tathagata literal suffering?

[josephzizys]

I asked, for I think the third time:

@josephzizys

I am asking if when people say “the aggregates are suffering” they mean “the aggregates are suffering” from something, the way i am suffering when i am suffering from a headache, or are they are saying “the aggregates ARE suffering” in the sense that the aggregates are actually a thing and that thing is called suffering?

And so far i have

@stephen

Perhaps this would make more sense if, instead of choosing ‘suffering’ to render dukkha, something like ‘unsatisfactory’ was used. Or ‘incapable of real happiness’.

Which seems to imply the “from something” camp, that is that there ARE perceptuons but that said perceptuons are unstable, unsatisfactory, suffering (from that defect) etc.

So yes, that makes more sense to me, and appears to be in line with the ebt.

Then i get

@Soren

Would you object if somebody said “a headache is suffering”?

Which again ignores my actual question amd again seems ambiguous, as its not the headache that suffers but me whonsuffers fromnthe headache.

But then, in another, related thread I get

@Jasudho

Unless I’m misunderstanding your point, this sounds like “If only water exists then by definition waves don’t exist.”

Dukkha manifests as forms; all forms are dukkha.
Same with perceptions, feelings, volitional formations, and consciousness.
All dukkha as various kinds and manifestations of experiences.
Those particular experiences are different and sometimes even pleasant, yet all are anicca, dukkha.

Now this is clearly a different position, it is not claiming that all things have the property of being unstable/unsatisfactory/suffering, it is using the “are” and the “only” in the other sense i posited, to claim that there is this dukka stuff which is like the water, and there are these form things, which are like the waves.

This is the idea that is being gotten at by “literally” in the “literal suffering” phrase, and this is what is clearly objectionable on any holistic and coherent reading of the ebt.

I hope people can see the difference elucidated, but I am learning not to be too confident thses days.

Anyway, thanks gang! I think i have gotten all i can from this discussion, my conclusion, which i had already on other grounds, is that suffering is a truly awful and incomprehensibly bad translation of dukkha, being formally a word for something that a person does (in bearing or enduring pain or discomfort) not a word for the thing the person is does it with ecept by a kind of semantic drift.

Metta