From the heart sutra
苦集滅道
ku shuu metsu dou
The Four Noble Truths. From Buddha's first discourse. It hinges/focuses on suffering {duhhka / duhkha}
Duhhka is known as one of the three marks of existence -
These three marks of existence—duhhka (the awareness of pain), anicca (the awareness of the fleeting, momentary nature of experience), and anatta (the awareness that we are identified with a separate self, which is ultimately not real)—are in fact marks of relative, manifest experience, the deep contemplation of which can reveal the absolute, unmanifest Reality of this and every moment. [http://in.integralinstitute.org/talk.aspx?id=957]
In the above it is interesting that it is translated as the awareness of pain. The implication seems that pain itself is not a mark of existence, but rather awareness of pain.
Note also that they are qualified as the marks of relative experience. They are not absolute reality. Letting go of them (their ceasing to be present in my life) does not mean "I" no longer exist, but that "I" experience the absolute reality of reality. ... I guess.
[LEC]
"This is the term I’ve chosen to translate the Pali
dukkha. It’s a difficult concept; its literal meaning is “pain”, and if it’s used in speaking of ordinary events, that’s what it means: “the man was shot by an arrow and experienced
dukkha“. But when the Buddha speaks of the truth of
dukkha, the cause of
dukkha, the cessation of
dukkha, he is speaking of something much more complex and wide-ranging than simple physical pain. He’s speaking of the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of our existence in an impermanent world—regret, despair, frustration, the folly of ambition, human frailty, the vanity of pride. We’ll be spending a good deal of time throughout the course exploring the various applications of the term
dukkha.
[http://dharmastudy.net/suttas/dhammacakkappavattana/]
Pain: dukkha. The basic everyday meaning of the word dukkha as a noun is "pain" as opposed to "pleasure" (sukha). These, with neither-dukkha-nor-sukha, are the three kinds of feeling (vedanā) (e.g., S iv 232). S v 209-10 explains dukkha vedanā as pain (dukkha) and unhappiness (domanassa), i.e., bodily and mental dukkha. This shows that the primary sense of dukkha, when used as a noun, is physical "pain," but then its meaning is extended to include mental pain, unhappiness. The same spread of meaning is seen in the English word "pain," for example in the phrase, "the pleasures and pains of life."
Painful: dukkha as an adjective refers to things which are not (in most cases) themselves forms of mental or physical pain, but which are experienced in ways which bring mental or physical pain. When it is said "birth is painful" etc, the word dukkha agrees in number and gender with what it is applied to, so is an adjective. The most usual translation "is suffering" does not convey this. Birth is not a form of "suffering," nor is it carrying out the action of "suffering," as in the use of the word in "he is suffering."
[http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.harv.html]
