The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (698 page)

Dudjom Rinpoche
(head of Tibetan Buddhist order)
:

see
BDUD-JOMS RIN-PO-CHE
.

 
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Dukhobors
(Russian sect)
:

see
DOUKOBHORS
.

 
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(P
li, Skt.). The second of the
Three Marks of Existence
in Buddhism and the subject of the
Four Noble Truths
. There is no satisfactory equivalent to the word in English, and it has been variously translated as ‘suffering’, ‘unsatisfactoriness’, ‘frustration’, ‘unhappiness’, ‘anguish’, ‘ill’, ‘dis
-ease
’ (opposite:
sukha
, ‘ease, well-being’): it is essentially transience and all that arises from the experience of transience.
Traditional Buddhism defines ‘dukkha’ in a number of different ways.

1. In the Four Noble Truths, dukkha is represented as ‘birth, old age, sickness and death; grief, sorrow, physical and mental pain, and despair; involvement with what one dislikes and separation from what one likes; not getting what one wants; in summary, the five groups of grasping (
pañc’up
d
nakkhandh
, cf.
SKHANDHA
) are a source of suffering’.
2. Threefold dukkha is ordinary mental and physical pain (
dukkha-dukkhat
), that is, pure or intrinsic suffering; suffering as the result of change (
viparin
ma-dukkhat
), owing to the impermanent and ephemeral nature of things; and suffering due to the formations (
sa
kh
ra-dukkhat
;
sankhara
), that is, the sense of
sa
s
ra
or our own temporality and finiteness.
3. It is maintained that all sentient beings—whether gods, humans,
pretas
, animals, or inhabitants of hell—are subject to dukkha. Gods suffer the least in the hierarchy of different beings, and the inhabitants of hell the most.

It is by comparison with
nirv
na