On 'kha' in dukkha and sukha

Maybe my mind is twisted, but here I try again. I’m not looking for a better fitting synonym for ‘suffering’. I’m interested to explore a translation like “opening (kha) for suffering (duh)”

‘Birth’ then would not be suffering per se, but an ‘opening for suffering’. etc.

To me that opens the possibility of Buddhism not declaring everything as suffering, stress etc. but identifying the openings through which suffering comes into our lifes. I’d find that more accurate, and actually already included in the term ‘dukkha’. I’m afraid I can’t make myself clearer :sweat:

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Ok, I see what you are saying. And I suppose that makes some sense out of the idea of the asavas as influxes coming in through the openings. But then I’m not sure that fits very well with the rest of the teaching. If all of these things were just regarded as openings for suffering, and not as inherently permeated by suffering, then why didn’t the Buddha just teach ways of blocking and guarding the openings so as not to let the suffering in?

It seems instead that he taught that the entire sensory realm of everyday forms and contacts with forms were Mara’s realm, to which we are fettered like slaves or work animals, and from which we need to escape altogether.

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Well in a way I think he did, if you think about sense restraint, restraint by the patimokkha, little sleep, food restrictions, sila in general etc. Also one could interpret the jhanas as temporarily blocking those openings. Aren’t most of the suttas (at least in SN and AN) dealing not with the ultimate goal but with suggestions to improve one’s state of mind significantly? And isn’t that the main criticism against the Jains, that they are constantly miserable - in contrast to the Buddha’s middle path? I think the idea of a teaching that temporarily blocks the openings of suffering until the permanent closing is achieved is not too far off…

An opposition to “Suddhi” – “purification” – comes to mind with this metaphor, and certainly plays a role in many dhamma sources.

Another question arises relevant to this topic:
Why “dukkha” with “kk” but “sukha” with “k”?

The etymologies offered in the PTS Dictionary don’t seem to indicate a parallelism between the two words.

(There is a Pali word “sukkha” – dried-up – but of quite distinct derivation.)

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Moderm scholarship of the cultural-historical perspective indicates that the Buddha lived and taught in what can be called an “upanishadic” era of Indian religious culture. That is, the Vedic world-view was evolving from the earlier Vedas as divinely inspired poetry, transmitted orally (and still to this day) that encoded the worldview, i.e. considered to be not authored by historically identifiable individuals, per se.

By the Buddha’s time, that tradition was transformed into a milieu of named individual teachers, who developed interpretative glosses of the earlier notions, and formed schools, with followers, texts (e.g. the “Upanishads “ per se), etc. In fact, the Buddha was in a sense a product of that milieu – an individual developing his own interpretation, on the basis of the background traditions, and promulgating it with followers and texts (also oral originally). As evidenced throughout the Suttanta, he was one of many such inspired teachers, who often vied with each other for followers.

Of course, his depth of insight resulted in a fundamental, radical transformation from the Vedic viewpoint, with the latter as s/t explicit, s/t implicit background to his teachings. We do see multiple sects of variously transformed Vedic roots were being formed, as also, for instance, the Jains/Nigantha tradition, which, along with the Buddha’s, became major and sustaining traditions on their own.

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That’s relatively simple - we have two different prefixes: duh (or dur, dus) and su
Because duh ends with a consonant it doubles the ‘k’, whereas su ends with a vowel and thus retains the single ‘k’.

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I’m coming in here late, but wanted to address the issue you’re expressing, from some translation work I’m engaged in. First, I think you’re right, it’s generally a “turn off” from the message if you tell people that Buddhism says simply all life is “suffering” or “pain”, and honestly I don’t think that’s what the Buddha had in mind.

If you look deeply into the root meaning of dus (duḥ) it seems to indicate something more like “corruption” than bad or evil or pain or suffering or whatnot. For instance, in the Bhagavad Gita there’s a compound “durbuddhi” (dus-buddhi). It is said in regards to the Kurus who are facing Krishna and Arjuna in the war. Are we to understand from this compound that buddhi is suffering, or that buddhi can suffer, or that there is pain in buddhi etc.? I don’t think so. But if we understand it as meaning “a corrupted buddhi” then it makes perfect sense (there are other such examples as well). The Kurus are those who’s buddhi or bodh is corrupted.

So I think we could look at duḥkha and sukha this way:

dus essentially means “corrupt,” and its use as a prefix gives the sense that there is something that is in itself good, but which has been corrupted (like durbuddhi). su essentially means good, and as a suffix gives the sense of something that is in good working order, or as it should be. Or simply put: duḥka is sukha corrupted.

The end of each term, kha, carries the meaning of “hole” and carries two common meanings: 1) the “holes” of the senses (ears, eyes, mouth, etc.), and 2) the hole in the nave of a wheel through which the axis runs. Both of these lend themselves easily to the following interpretation: a kha operating as it should is su-kha, a kha that is corrupted is duḥ-kha. The senses operating as they should be (sukha) don’t necessarily bring what we commonly call “pleasure” or “happiness” (as contrasted with pain or suffering), but rather a kind of ease, comfort, contentment, or even bliss (or our natural, as-we-should-be state). The senses corrupted bring about discomfort, dis-ease, suffering (an abundance of pleasure will bring dis-ease just as an abundance of pain). A wheel with a good axel hole (i.e. well oiled, perfectly round, etc.) makes for a smooth ride (as it should be); a wheel with a corrupted axel (un-oiled, not perfectly round, etc.) makes for a rough ride (“corrupted” or “agitated”).

So, in this interpretation, what we commonly call “pleasure” is often a result of duḥkha, not sukha, and so is “pain”. sukha properly speaking is like a well-oiled machine working as it’s supposed to work and thus leads to a state of ease where neither extreme of pleasure or pain is to be found.

The main point is that both pleasure and pain are “excitements” of the senses (i.e. the sense are in some way agitated), and thus both fall under duḥkha. So, when we tell people that Buddha called life “duḥkha”, it doesn’t come off as so out-of-tune with human experience (which isn’t all suffering) when we understand duḥkha to mean both pleasure and pain. Life consists of a pretty steady alteration of conditions along that spectrum of agitation. If we say: duḥkha is essentially our mind in an agitated state, and sukha is our mind in a calm state of ease (as in the jhanas), I think that brings the idea closer to what we find elsewhere in Buddhist teachings. It’s that agitation that we ought to seek to calm down, through meditation and mindfulness etc. etc. It’s not the simplistic idea that “all life is suffering”. Rather: life (on this earth, in these bodies) is experienced as a constant state of agitation of the senses and mind. Sukha is what we want instead.

But, when we go deeper in regards to sukha we should also say: even sukha is but a conditioned mental state, which must not be grasped onto, but transcended in the higher states of jhana.

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Thanks for re-activating this topic - I don’t think the question can be solved but at least it can help us forming our own understanding…

The common translation of ‘suffering’ refers to dukkha, not to the prefix dur itself.

The common etymological ideas about kha are too narrow I think. If you keep in mind that it’s a two-letter word we would much more expect a very broad range of meanings instead of just an axle-hole. And indeed if you look into other compounds the meaning is much more an ‘opening’, ‘hole’, ‘empty space’ - the axle-hole being just a specific case.

In my simple mind su-kha is then a ‘good opening’ and duh-kha a ‘bad opening’. Openings through which different (more specific) feelings or experiences can come.

That sounds intuitively very correct to me. We’d then have unpleasantly (dukkha) and pleasantly experienced agitation (sukkha). The implied goal of course would be to get rid of the agitation, which we could call ‘peace’ I guess.

It’s bit of a tautological perspective, but a helpful view nonetheless.

Dukkha in Buddhism isn’t for immediate understanding, ie. it is not for mass general consumption. It certainly isn’t for attracting people into the Dhamma! To remove Dukkha, dukkha must be fully understood (parinneyya), much like a cancer specialist learns all about cancer. To find a place between agitation that is sukha, is it to find a place worth clinging to, in the rounds of birth and death, which means to continue the rounds of birth and death.

with metta

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I’m very much in the context-team myself and would not bet on the etymology horse only. Yet we have the interesting case here that ‘dukkha’ is not an old term at all and was maybe coined by the samana-movement altogether.

I’ve found only three pre-Buddhist occurrences of the Sanskrit duḥkha - all relatively close in age - so with such a ‘neologism’ the etymology might be indeed interesting and could still convey the actual meaning of the word.

The first is Chandogya Upanisad 7.26.2:
“When a man rightly sees, he sees no death, no sickness or distress.”
na paśyo mṛtyuṃ paśyati na rogaṃ nota duḥkhatām

The second is Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 4.4.14:
“Those who have known it [that atman is the world] - they become immortal. As for the rest -only suffering awaits them.”
ye tad vidur amṛtās te bhavanty athetare duḥkham evāpiyanti

The third source is not philosophical but literature concerned with the details of ritual procedure, Baudhayana Srautasutra 17.43.5:
“He follows the chariot while it is moving, with the formula, ‘May this your chariot, O Asvins, be not injured due to bad [duḥkha] or good hole [sukha] in the nave.’”
atha rathaṃ pravartamānam anumantrayate ‘ayaṃ vām aśvinā rathas mā duḥkhe mā sukhe riṣat’

The latter is the most interesting one because it comes from a concrete and non-philosophical context and actually refers to the famous axle-hole. Also, even sukha is a source of injury in this context - any kha seems to be negative here, no matter if duḥ- or su-.

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Hmm, what could a good hole in the nave be? I guess the nave is an axle-hole?

The same utterance is repeated Baudhayana’s Grhyasutra where Oldenberg translates “May this your chariot not suffer damage, neither in pain nor in joy”.

Quite different interpretation :thinking:

I’ve been following the same rabbit-hole: and I missed the Baudhayana reference, so thank you!

The philosophical meanings in the Upanishads are pretty much as you’d find in Buddhism. But the Baudhayana is the interesting one!

Now, previous to this, as you say duḥkha doesn’t seem to occur at all. Sanskritdictionary.com does mention a single use in the Rig Veda, but I have not been able to locate it.

But! in the Rig Veda, we find several occurrences of sukha, which I list below:

  • RV_1,013.04a agne sukhatame rathe
  • RV_1,016.02c indraṃ sukhatame rathe
  • RV_1,020.03a takṣan nāsatyābhyām parijmānaṃ sukhaṃ ratham
  • RV_1,049.02a supeśasaṃ sukhaṃ rathaṃ
  • RV_1,087.06a śriyase kam bhānubhiḥ sam mimikṣire te raśmibhis ta ṛkvabhiḥ sukhādayaḥ (men to celebrate their praise?)
  • RV_1,120.11c somapeyaṃ sukho rathaḥ
  • RV_3,035.04c sthiraṃ rathaṃ sukham
  • RV_3,041.09a arvāñcaṃ tvā sukhe rathe
  • RV_5,005.03c sukhai rathebhir ūtaye
  • RV_5,030.01a kva sya vīraḥ ko apaśyad indraṃ sukharatham
  • RV_5,060.02a ā ye tasthuḥ pṛṣatīṣu śrutāsu sukheṣu rudrā maruto ratheṣu
  • RV_5,063.05a rathaṃ yuñjate marutaḥ śubhe sukhaṃ śūro na mitrāvaruṇā gaviṣṭiṣu
  • RV_5,087.01c pra śardhāya prayajyave sukhādaye (rushes on in joy)
  • RV_8,058.03a jyotiṣmantaṃ ketumantaṃ tricakraṃ sukhaṃ rathaṃ suṣadam bhūrivāram
  • RV_9,112.04a aśvo voḷhā sukhaṃ rathaṃ hasanām upamantriṇaḥ
  • RV_10,075.09a sukhaṃ rathaṃ

So that’s pretty dramatic: 16 occurrences, and all but 2 occur in conjunction with ratha i.e. “chariot”. They are descriptions of the fast, powerful Chariots of the Gods.

So the “chariot” derivation must be correct. And, given that the sense of kha as “hole” is well-established, the sense of “axle-hole” is probably right. But the sense is probably at least somewhat loose, something like “smooth-running”.

The two exceptions both use the term sukhādaya, which seems to mean something like “bringing joy”. If this is correct, they show that the more general sense of sukha as “happiness” was already emerging.

Then the Baudhayana gives us a context for confirming that duḥkha is derived from sukha as the opposite. Why does the negative form not appear in the Vedas? Because they were into the whole “positive thinking” thing! The Vedas are, overwhelmingly, hymns in praise of the Gods, so by praising the smooth running of the Gods’ chariots, the hope is it would help their own chariots run better.

Now, that’s the etymology. But the usage in the Suttas is quite different. The metaphorical connection with chariots has faded, and the basic meaning of dukkha and sukha is “pain” and “pleasure”. From there the more existential/philosophical sense of “suffering” is derived.

Never forget, this is normal in language: a term starts with a specific metaphorical basis, but over time the metaphor wears away and becomes thinner, and eventually is lost altogether. Perhaps a close reading of Sutta texts might establish some metaphorical echoes of the chariot metaphor, but it is clearly not prominent. But without close argument, we can’t assume that the metaphor is still alive, just because it was used 500 or more years prior.

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Not all lost is it? Thinking of the imagery of the wheel of Dhamma.

This asymmetrical development of sukha and duḥkha is very interesting! One would guess that problems with axle-holes would have dominated the more concrete middle-Vedic literature.

There are for example chariot races in the rajasuya (king consecration) ritual etc., so actually many opportunities to mention what to do in case of a potential ‘duḥ-kha’.

It’s worth repeating Oldenberg’s argument from 1881 that no matter which Indian cart or chariot he took, it was never a ‘pleasant’ ride, so he suspects a different origination for the later sukha and duhkha.

Indeed something weird has happened there, for sukha is almost absent from late Vedic texts.

In the huge Satapatha Brahmana it appears only three times (none of it in the Brhadaranyaka): in SB 2.6.2.11 translated as ‘blessing’. In 11.5.7.1 as ‘pleasure’, in 11.5.7.4 as satisfied

Kausitaki Br. 5.5.17 quite surely as ‘happiness’

In its sole context in Chandogya 7.23 sukha is equated with wealth - but could well mean ‘real happiness is wealth’.

So we see no transition here it seems. We have a sukha connected with cart, wheel, chariot. And then ‘suddenly’ (and rarely) a sukha as pleasure - and not even paired with duhkha.

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