Suffering
Dukkha. An unsteady axle on a wheel
The Russian word for suffering — strada — literally means harvest. The reaping.
“Suffering builds character.” This mantra gets handed down generation to generation. It’s basically a curse. They’re telling you: you’re an armor-piercing bullet, get ready. Tune your radar to the path with the most armor. You must pierce it, live through it, and grow a core of depleted uranium. Adamantium if possible. Few have managed to harden that much in one lifetime. But supposedly those who fall in battle go to Valhalla. Eternal victory.
The Buddha summed up Buddhism in four words. Dukkha Samudaya Nirodha Marga. Suffering Cause Cessation Path. In other words — how to relieve suffering.
Translating dukkha as “suffering” gave Buddhism bad PR. — So you’re saying life is suffering? I’m sitting here enjoying myself, ha.
Sanskrit duḥkha = duḥ (“bad,” “difficult”) + kha (“axle,” “space”). Literally: an unsteady axle on a wheel. Disharmony, imbalance, the non-smoothness of existence.
Dukkha is restless dissatisfaction. The mind generates it itself — through comparison, expectation, interpretation. Suffering intensifies through the belief that we can control the external world or our own states.
Suffering is not a law of nature. It’s a habit you can drop.