I mostly agree that “suffering” is confusing and it would be better if we used a different word, but also at this point it’s become jargon among English-speaking Buddhists (not that they all necessarily understand what it means, but most serious practitioners do learn about dukkha and then learn that “suffering” is just the word we use for “dukkha” in English), and like all jargon it’s misleading to a lay audience but understood by those who learn it.
I’m curious to hear more about this since I don’t find this to be the case at all. As I mentioned elsewhere in the comments of this thread, certainly the definition of “suffering” that I currently have has gotten a little different from what it was when I hadn’t yet meditated… but I do think that it overall still lines up with the common-sensical definition of suffering. Such that it’s a fair to summary to say something like “the practice leads to drastically reduced suffering” and that a past version of me who was shown various meditation-induced mindstates I’ve had would agree that those mindstates definitely involve less suffering. I find that the differences from the common-sense definition mostly only become apparent if one is pressed for details of what exactly the suffering-free states are like.
“Suffering” is confusing because it’s imprecise. It just means “to experience pain”, though with a connotation of happening for a duration because the “fer” part of suffering means to bear as in to carry. But dukkha refers to the pain we create for ourselves by expecting the world to be other than it is. So while awakening does reduce suffering, it doesn’t eliminate it because awakening addresses dukkha, not, for example, physical pain signals from injury (though dealing with physical pain gets a lot easier when you’re not also dealing with dukkha, to the point that “pain” can start to look like something categorically different from what “pain” was pre-awakening).
Thanks! That makes sense to me, though I still think that it’s close enough when talking to non-meditators, at least if one says that the path offers a “drastic reduction in suffering” rather than an elimination of all suffering.
I’m curious to hear more about this since I don’t find this to be the case at all. As I mentioned elsewhere in the comments of this thread, certainly the definition of “suffering” that I currently have has gotten a little different from what it was when I hadn’t yet meditated… but I do think that it overall still lines up with the common-sensical definition of suffering. Such that it’s a fair to summary to say something like “the practice leads to drastically reduced suffering” and that a past version of me who was shown various meditation-induced mindstates I’ve had would agree that those mindstates definitely involve less suffering. I find that the differences from the common-sense definition mostly only become apparent if one is pressed for details of what exactly the suffering-free states are like.
“Suffering” is confusing because it’s imprecise. It just means “to experience pain”, though with a connotation of happening for a duration because the “fer” part of suffering means to bear as in to carry. But dukkha refers to the pain we create for ourselves by expecting the world to be other than it is. So while awakening does reduce suffering, it doesn’t eliminate it because awakening addresses dukkha, not, for example, physical pain signals from injury (though dealing with physical pain gets a lot easier when you’re not also dealing with dukkha, to the point that “pain” can start to look like something categorically different from what “pain” was pre-awakening).
Thanks! That makes sense to me, though I still think that it’s close enough when talking to non-meditators, at least if one says that the path offers a “drastic reduction in suffering” rather than an elimination of all suffering.