[Buddha-l] Core teachings

[Richard Nance]

Jamie Hubbard wrote:

 > > As Steve Collins felicitously put it, "It is patently false, for
> > Buddhists as for everyone except the pathologically depressed, that
> > everything in life is suffering."

Richard Hayes responded:

> But then Buddhism has never taught (so far as I now) that everything in
> life is suffering. As far as I know, it teaches only that there is such
> a thing as suffering.

I have a feeling you're baiting us, Richard, but I'll bite.  I like
your interpretation, but I don't know how to reconcile it with
passages like "sabba.m bhikkhave dukkha.m" (SN IV, p. 28). (Perhaps
your qualm is with the translation of dukkha as "suffering" -- but
since you go on to use the that translation in the remainder of your
post, I'll assume that isn't the problem.) Even if one restricts
"sabba.m" to those things explicitly enumerated in the sutta at issue,
the range of things labeled as suffering is pretty broad indeed. So
broad, in fact, that it's easily read as "everything" -- at least
(just about) everything in the life of one who isn't awakened.

So: how do you read a passage like that? Is it simply a hyperbolic way
of putting a more modest point?

Best wishes,

R. Nance
Ann Arbor

p.s.  For those who own Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation of the SN, the
relevant passage is on p. 1147.