The first noble truth in Buddhism is usually stated as “Life is suffering.” At its face value, this statement seems so negative that people (especially Westerners, I think) struggle against it, as if accepting this truth is resignation, a call to abandon optimism. I have also seen it stated as “Suffering exists,” which is more palatable. Sometimes the word “stress” is substituted. Whatever word is chosen, the problem is that we take the statement as an absolute. We see the statement as declarative, prescriptive, and not descriptive. To become entangled and waylaid by the semantics is to miss the point, and that point is, “Life is hard.” It doesn’t mean it’s not worth living, or entirely miserable. It just means that living is a challenge. Accepting what is presents one with the opportunity to explore, learn, change, and grow.
An excerpt from Buddhanet explains the first noble truth thusly:
The First Noble Truth is not a dismal metaphysical statement saying that everything is suffering. Notice that there is a difference between a metaphysical doctrine in which you are making a statement about The Absolute and a Noble Truth which is a reflection. A Noble Truth is a truth to reflect upon; it is not an absolute; it is not The Absolute. This is where Western people get very confused because they interpret this Noble Truth as a kind of metaphysical truth of Buddhism — but it was never meant to be that.
You can see that the First Noble Truth is not an absolute statement because of the Fourth Noble Truth, which is the way of non-suffering. You cannot have absolute suffering and then have a way out of it, can you? That doesnÂ’t make sense. Yet some people will pick up on the First Noble Truth and say that the Buddha taught that everything is suffering.
The Pali word, dukkha, means “incapable of satisfying” or “not able to bear or withstand anything”: always changing, incapable of truly fulfilling us or making us happy. The sensual world is like that, a vibration in nature. It would, in fact, be terrible if we did find satisfaction in the sensory world because then we wouldnÂ’t search beyond it; weÂ’d just be bound to it. However, as we awaken to this dukkha, we begin to find the way out so that we are no longer constantly trapped in sensory consciousness.