Core tenet of Buddhism

Existence as ordinarily lived is marked by dukkha.

The first noble truth: an unease running through conditioned life — not pessimism, a diagnosis.

Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The first of the Four Noble Truths. Dukkha is usually translated "suffering," but the word is closer to unsatisfactoriness — the wobble of a wheel running off-center. The claim is not that the world is miserable; it is that nothing impermanent can be leaned on without the lean eventually failing, and that ordinary life is built almost entirely of such leaning.

From the sources — the passages this rests on; concise renderings, cited

Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, illness is dukkha, death is dukkha; union with the unloved is dukkha, separation from the loved is dukkha, not getting what one wants is dukkha.
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta — SN 56.11
From the first sermon at Sarnath; our concise rendering.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas

Time is a wheel, and this is the worst quarter of it. Hinduism Go deeper →

Time is a wheel with no beginning. Jainism Go deeper →

Zhuangzi dreams the butterfly. Taoism · story Read it in full →

Ise, rebuilt every twenty years. Shinto · rite Go deeper →

O Oya. Yoruba Religion · figure Meet them →

B Baron Samedi — death, laughing. Haitian Vodou · figure Meet them →

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