#5: Suffering in Buddhism

1.How has western translation of suffering contributed to a misunderstanding of Buddhism's teachings?

Suffering: The word often translated as suffering has no English equivalent. The meaning of the phrase is not that "life is miserable," as the English translation might seem to indicate, but that some pain is inevitable in life. Birth is painful, sickness is painful, aging is painful, death is painful. It is painful to experience unhappiness and displeasure; it is painful to want something and not be able to have it; it is painful to have something and lose it; it is painful when a pleasurable experience ends. 2.How can one break the cycle of samsara?

What the Buddha had been seeking when he became enlightened was a way out of samsara, the endless cycle of death and rebirth. The Hindu texts, the Upanishads, which were written at around the same time, had argued that the way out of the endless cycle of death and rebirth was to realize that one's individual self or soul (atman) is a part of the world soul (Brahman). 3.How do the four noble truths contrast to western medicine's methodology of treating disease?

According to textual accounts of his first sermon, written long after his death, what the Buddha said was that the forms of suffering he listed (birth, sickness, aging, loss, etc.) make up the self and that the "self" is constantly changing. Thus while there may be an experience of selfhood, there is no permanent, unchanging self.

The Four Noble Truths are often understood as a prescription for approaching disease: symptom/ cause/ elimination of cause/ remedy.

In this formulation, the cause of the disease (suffering), is the pivotal moment. Buddhist scholar Donald Lopez says, "If it is possible to identify a particular contribution of the Buddha to the philosophies of his day, it would be the thoroughgoing emphasis on causation as an inexorable force whose devastating effects can be escaped by understanding its operation. That is, everything is an effect of a cause. If the cause can be identified and destroyed, the effect is also destroyed."