“Life is suffering” is misleading for at least two reasons. First, the Buddha used an ancient Indian language similar to Sanskrit called Pali, and the word he used in Pali for the first noble truth, dukkha, is difficult to translate. Dukkha is too multifaceted and nuanced a term to be captured in the one-word translation “suffering.” And second, the fact of dukkha in our lives doesn’t mean that life is only dukkha.”
