[The following was posted by Shugz in a forum somewhere. It has been slightly modified.]
Buddhists sound like we always are whining about the adversities of life when things are translated into English and the “Buddhism” judged as it seems to appear in English.
Kinda like judging the Holy Qur’an as a work of English literature in a way. Many things are lost in translation. Most times the literal meaning of words can be translated from one language to another. What is lost in the translation are the idiomatic, cultural, and metaphorical values and qualities of words used by a group of people as ways to describe how they see life.
“Suffering” is a mistranslation of the Pali word “Dukkha.” Dukkha is the etymological opposite of the Pali word “Sukkha” which is most often mistranslated and given a very simplistic meaning of “Peace.”
So if we were to imagine ourselves standing by a stream watching it flow we can better grasp the essential value and qualities of the word Sukkha:
When we watch our stream flow effortlessly down hill, we see the stream move and wind along the path of least resistance. And so we can say here that our stream Flows in Harmony with the landscape. Not fighting… not forcing. Then when we look at our stream and we see the state of ease in which it Flows because there are no big rocks and tree trunks impeding its Flow, we call this State of Ease and Harmony “Sukkha.” Not ease as in easy, but ease as in without resistance. Think sex and KY Jelly. Actually in my other language, when something goes into a hole easily without resistance it “Jol Sukkh,” Jol meaning to enter or go inside.
So when we hypothetically later down stream observe a large rock in the body of the stream, such that this rock causes a deformation or curvature in the flow of the stream, we understand that the Sukkha nature of the stream – which is its natural state ((Wu Wei)) – has been disturbed. Or we can say that the Ease of the Natural Flow has become “Dis-Eased.”
We call this state of Disturbance or Dis-Ease “Dukkha.” When my mom says something is troubling her mind she says something “Tuh Dukkh” her mind, meaning that the natural state of her mind is disturbed by something that should not be there.
And so the Buddha in this context… and only this context, is like a psychologist or psychiatrist. You go to him and say: “Buddha, the Wu Wei of my Life… the Natural State of its Flow… its Harmony with what surrounds me has been Disturbed by something which makes me feel “Dis-eased” or uneasy, but I don’t know what this disturbance is?”
And the Buddha may say to you as a shrink: “Well, strong craving or intense attachment to something MAY be the big rock in your stream’s Flow. Tell me, what have you been obsessed over… compulsively doing… or addicted to lately?”
Then you say: “Well Buddha… I am an alcoholic. I like beer. I drink so much I lost my job, can’t pay my rent, and my girlfriend left me. I feel suicidal now.”
And the Buddha says to you: “Well shit… there’s your fucking problem! If you quit being addicted to shit, maybe your Wu Wei will come back!”
So when one feels a disturbance in Life, it’s just a sign post telling you that what you are experiencing is not the natural Way/Tao that Life Flows. Life in Buddhism is actually meant to be pleasant. The Buddha elsewhere explains that the “world” we exist in is called the Kamasukkha Pumi.” Pumi means “World/Realm,” Kama as in Kama sutra meaning sensual delight ((also called Mudita)), and Sukkha is Ease. When you experience Dukkha or Un-ease or a disturbance in life, it means you are not living life as it was meant to be lived. But when Buddhism is translated and apprehended in English, all the good stuff gets lost somewhere unfortunately.
When we are talking about the “4 Noble Truths” the word most often mistranslated as “Desire” in the original Pali is Tanha or Trsna ((Trisna)) in Sanskrit. Tanha/Trisna literally means “Thirst,” or to “Need To Drink.” It has nothing to do with the feeling or human emotion of “desire.” The word for Desire in Pali is “Chanda” which is not used once in the sutta teaching the 4 Noble Truths.
What happens when you are in a desert and you are Thirsty/Tanha and you don’t drink for 4 days? You die. So from the literal meaning of Tanha you get the various cultural and metaphorical meanings of Tanha.
The thing with Pali – the language the Buddha is believed to have spoken – is that it is a common street grade vernacular of Sanskrit. So we can say that Sanskrit is to Courtroom English what Pali is to street grade Ebonics.
The problem is that in Sanskrit or our Courtroom English, each word has a very specific literal meaning. In such cases you need your words to be very well defined and properly uses, otherwise your religion and legal cases won’t make any real sense.
But with street grade level Ebonics or Pali, the technicalities are not important and so street level words often take on very colorful metaphorical meanings to the speakers involved.
For example in a higher grade of English the word “Hit” may literally mean to strike at something or to assault someone with your fist or limbs. You can literally translate that word into a different language with no problem.
But if you were to take that same word when used by street grade speakers where they say, “Yo, that bitch is fine, I’d HIT that shit.” How do you literally translate the word “hit” in this case where the same word to the speakers disregards the literal meaning and uses a subcultural metaphorical meaning specific to their subculture and paradigm? Hit in the street level usage would of course mean to “Copulate.”
Tanha on a metaphorical level has the value and quality of describing an irrational strong impulse or urgency… like you gotta have it or you’d just die!
For example you walk into Forever 21 at the mall and you see a nice outfit and you say, “OMG! I gotta have that outfit or I’ll just die Margret!” And then you proceed to buy everything you gotta have in the store with your dad’s credit card.
Did you actually need those outfits? No. Did you want them? Yes. Did you desire them? Yes… but it was more then a want.
Or to better explain Tanha is at New Years when my whole family gathers all of us “kids” ((under 25)) get together and we play this gambling game called Kla Klok. You use 3 dice with pictures of a Crab, a Lobster, a Gourd, a Chinese coin, a Tiger, and I forgot the other picture. The game is the kid version of the Chinese gambling game called Sic Bo.
It’s a fun game and we all do bet with dollar bills. We do have a normal desire to play the game. Some of us lose our money, some win. But after the game is done, nobody is Dukkha.
But I have an auntie whose husband also liked to gamble… except his passion or compulsion for gambling went beyond desire. He once owned several businesses and lived in Thousand Oaks, which is a well to do neighborhood.
He gambled all of his revenue; he lost his home; my auntie left his ass for a long time. Even when he went homeless, wifeless, kidless, and jobless, he was still lying to people left and right to get money to gamble because he said that at any moment he can win it all back and make everybody happy.
It took the Chinese mob to threaten to kill him and my family for money he owed for him to “Awaken” to the realization that he fucked up bad.
My uncle’s state of delusion in regards to gambling cannot be accurately described as a simple “desire.” And in our culture, or as we see things, his state of mind with gambling went beyond the Western idea of “addiction.” It was a delusion that he was consumed by.
When you are really, really thirsty, all you can think about is water and drinking, you see? That’s Tanha ((Thirst)). Or differently, when you need to go pee really bad on a road trip, all you can think about is finding a restroom to pee in. Nothing else crosses your mind.
Tanha metaphorically tries to describe a delusional state of mind where you are so fixated… so enthralled by/with… so engrossed in/by… something, that that something that imprisons your mind and attention – your conscious mind – such that you are not aware consciously of anything else.
Addiction is different. Most of the time when you are addicted to something like smoking, you are aware that you are smoking. You know it is bad for you. You know you can’t quit. But you try sometimes. That’s addiction.
Tanha is being so lost that your literally unconscious of your problem until you hit rock bottom and find yourself sleeping on the streets and then it dawns on you, “Fuck… how the fuck did I get here… how did I let “that” consume me in such a manner that it took everything?” That’s Tanha. You don’t know you have Tanha until you’ve run into your brick wall. Then when you wake up to your Awakening, you realize that your Tanha for whatever has not only caused Dukkha in your own life… but the lives of many people around you. People who once cared for you and loved you.
This idea that Tanha = Dukkha after it is explained may not be a big deal for us today you see. But to a common Dalit ((Untouchable)) living in India in circa 500BC in a rigid caste system, Trisna ((tanha)) was a big liberating deal.
The Buddha would go to common Dalits who were treated like shit and he would tell them, “That Dukkha you are experiencing in life is not natural. It is caused because you have Tanha for your Brahminical Religion which divides society into castes and which has placed you at the very bottom. That Tanha… that consuming delusion that if you accept the bullshit those Brahmins tell you… that if you gave them gold… and worked for them your whole life… that you would be reborn in a higher caste is what is causing your Dukkha.”
That’s Tanha. To Thirst for something in such a delusional way that you are not aware of an alternative or that you are even imprisoned… enthralled… “spellbound.”
There is nothing “wrong” in Buddhism with carnal desire. Unless you have taken the 201-210 vows of a Monk/Nun. Otherwise Buddhism as the Buddha explains in the same sutta he taught the 4 Noble Truths in that the Ariyamagga is the Middle Path of reason and moderation. Its the path which rejects extreme religious austerity ((severe ascetic abstinence)) and irrational indulgence. “Middle Path” in Buddhism metaphorically means Everything in Between those two extreme poles. Which is a vast amount of the greater arena of human experience. Just use commonsense, reason, and indulge in what life has to offer in a rational and responsible manner, becoming of an Ariya ((Nobility/Honorable)).
