The Range of Suffering （苦的範疇）

The Buddha does not merely touch the problem of suffering tangentially; he makes it, rather, the very cornerstone of his teaching. He starts the Four Noble Truths that sum up his message with the announcement that life is inseparably tied to something he calls dukkha.

＊佛陀不是只蜻蜓點水般地碰觸苦的問題;相反的，他將苦當作是佛法教義的基石。他以教法的總綱——四聖諦為始，宣說「生命繫縛於不可分離的苦(dukkha)」。

The Pali word is often translated as suffering, but it means something deeper than pain and misery. It refers to a basic unsatisfactoriness running through our lives, the lives of all but the enlightened.

＊dukkha這個字被翻譯為「苦」，但是，它的意涵比 痛苦與不幸更深奧。「苦」指的是除了覺者以外,我們生活中一種基本的不滿意。

Sometimes this unsatisfactoriness erupts into the open as sorrow, grief, disappointment, or despair; but usually it hovers at the edge of our awareness as a vague unlocalized sense that things are never quite perfect, never fully adequate to our expectations of what they should be.

有時候，這種不滿意會突然成為可見的憂傷、悲痛、失望或絕望。可是，「苦」 通常以一種含糊不確定的感覺，盤旋在我們覺知的邊緣。世事從來都不是完美的，總不會完全符合我們的期望。

This fact of dukkha, the Buddha says, is the only real spiritual problem. The other problems — the theological and metaphysical questions that have taunted religious thinkers through the centuries — he gently waves aside as “matters not tending to liberation.” What he teaches, he says, is just suffering and the ending of suffering, dukkha and its cessation.

＊佛陀說「苦」這個事實，是唯一真正的修行問題。 幾世紀以來，一些令宗教思想家困擾的，有關神學或玄學的問題，佛陀輕輕地把它們擺在一邊，因為它們與解脫無關。佛陀所教所說，只是「苦」與「苦的止息」。

@節錄自The Noble Eightfold Path(Bhikkhu Boddhi)

翻譯參考自香光寺.