Suffering, unease, or unsatisfactoriness.
Suffering, unease, or unsatisfactoriness — the pervasive unsatisfactoriness of conditioned existence, rooted in craving for transient things. The first of the Four Noble Truths and one of the three marks of existence. Its opposite is sukha.
Broader than English suffering, sorrow, or anguish: it spans gross pain but extends to a subtle, normally unperceived unsatisfactoriness in even pleasant experience. The canon distinguishes three types — ordinary pain, the suffering of change, and the pervasive unsatisfactoriness of all conditioned things. Unlike German Weltschmerz (a romantic-era mood), dukkha is a structural diagnosis of existence, not a transient sentiment.
du- “bad, difficult” + kha; more likely from duḥ-sthā “standing badly, unsteady.”
Two accounts: the traditional du- “bad” + kha “axle-hole” (a badly-fitting axle, a bumpy ride); and the scholarly-preferred derivation from duḥ-sthā “standing badly, unstable” (favored by Monier-Williams and modern philologists).
Central to Buddhism as the first Noble Truth, and predating it in the early Upanishads. Translation history is notable: early Western translators rendered it “suffering,” later scholars judging that too narrow.
“Suffering” is now widely regarded as too narrow; preferred renderings include “unsatisfactoriness,” “unease,” and “stress,” with many leaving it untranslated. The popular “bad axle-hole” etymology is folk; scholarship favors duḥ-sthā “standing badly.”