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[Alexandr Korol]

Pleasure (sukha) is also understood in Buddhism as a type of suffering, since, for example, separation from what is pleasing ultimately also leads to suffering. According to the Buddhist teaching on the impermanence of all phenomena in the world (anitya), such pleasure is always finite, after which it turns into dukkha.

The term dukkha is often translated as suffering, although this is not entirely accurate. In Buddhism, the word dukkha refers to the entire set of “painful attachments” and the unpleasant feelings they cause throughout a person’s life.

The First Noble Truth does not state that “everything in the world is permeated with dukkha,” because dukkha refers not to the external world, but to the internal experience of beings. At the end of his exposition of the truth of suffering, the Buddha summarizes what has been said: “The five aggregates of ‘attachment’ (upādāna- skandha) are dukkha.” Here, what is meant are the five groups (skandhas) of karmically conditioned psycho-physical phenomena (dharmas) that make up an individual’s experience: form (rūpa), sensations (vedanā), perceptions (saṃjñā), karmic formations (saṃskāra), and sensory consciousness (vijñāna). Dukkha encompasses all forms of existence, including the gods. And Buddhist cosmology (“psychocosm”), which is in fact one way of describing the inner world, relates to the First Truth.

Four aspects of the Truth of Suffering

In some texts of Southern Buddhism, in the Northern Abhidharma, and in Indian classical works such as the Abhidharmakosha, Yogacharabhumi-shastra (chapter “Shravakabhumi”), Abhisamayalankara, and Pramanavarttika, the meaning of the Four Noble Truths is unfolded in the form of sixteen aspects: each truth has four aspects or characteristics. These sixteen aspects are objects (themes) for reflection and subsequent meditation. It is believed that meditation on the sixteen aspects of the Four Noble Truths reduces the basis for the manifestation of defilements (kleshas) and strengthens the basis for the emergence of all that is positive. The basis for the manifestation of defilements is false views (drishti), and the cause of their spontaneous manifestation is ignorance (avidya). It is necessary to replace the basis on which defilements arise with wisdom (prajna) and right views corresponding to the sixteen aspects of the Four Noble Truths.