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Rafael Thundercat

A new way to see Dukka as "Something hard to face"

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Is not Trauma something we hide from view so we dont need to see it anymore? 

Is not true that a lot of things that guide our behavior are mostly hiden behind cope mechaninsm to avoid facing some hard realities about our relationships be it with parents,society,money or whatever other thing?

Well, a random line os events brougth me to a new way to see the word or concept of Dukka that normaly we take as suffering. But somewhere in the video below the writer explain that he found out Dukka as "something difficult to face or see" or as he say, in the therapeutic set "a trauma". He came to his work via the story of Buddha and is known that Buddha lost his Mother in early age so the writer considered that maybe this took the young Siddartha to somehow go into the path of Dissasociation in a way to deal with this traumatic event in his development. And then one day he got the contentment after all years of struggle. 
Hard to explain so for who wish check the video below
 


What brogth me to this author was another guy that deals more especialy with the issue of Grief and the lack of space in society to Grief loss. For those in the path of looking deep into "things had to see" or Dukka, this is also a good guy to check the work. His name is Francis Weller. 

Screenshot_20230217-201719_YouTube.jpg

Anyway comming back to the problem of using ancient terms is that we somehow lack in may ways the context where these terms came up and we get new modern interpretations that sometimes had nothing to do with the original intent of the word.

From the link below

https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/what-is-the-best-translation-for-dukkha/5025

I got this:

"The most common translation for dukkha is “suffering.” I have always felt that this translation is nearly a little harsh and have preferred “unsatisfactoriness. "

Many years ago I had to translate the Chinese word “qi” 气. I decided not to translate it using one of the common methods; by looking at the origin of character; steam coming off rice. Instead I looked at how the word was used by ancient writers. I noticed that there were about 20 different meanings depending on who the author was and what dynasty. In the end though I was able to trace it back to its most original use, which could be summed up as that vital essence of air or that “thing” within air that gives birth to life, movement and manifestations of the physical world.

Can we do the same for dukkha, to see how it was ‘used’ throughout the early suttas and find the correct translation not based on etymology but how it was originally used. One of the issues I see is that so many things are dukkha. Being one of the core concepts of Buddhism I can’t help but feel the importance of a correct translation, especially when I have seen so many different ones with the most recent being “stress."

I recently came across a translation of anattā as “void of self”, this translation seemed to make much more sense to me than “non-self” or 无我. One may argue these are minor nuances, but for me these differences in translations are profound as they have very different meanings.

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