This term means the suffering from afflictions. The implications of “suffering” in Buddhism are very broad. Namely it refers to the physical and the mental pain experienced in specific events. It also refers to the suffering when joy fades, up to the suffering that all is impermanent and changing. On the whole one speaks of “three kinds of sufferings,” namely “suffering qua suffering or duh khaduh,” “suffering of change, or viparināmaduhkhatā,” and “suffering inherent in conditioning, or samskāraduhkhatā.” The understanding of “suffering” is the starting point to practice the Buddhist doctrine: only when one recognizes that life is suffering can one be determined to try to understand and to analyze the causes of suffering. After that one may eliminate these causes through effective methods. As a consequence one may stay away from affliction and even from the reincarnation. These are the four truths: suffering, its cause, its extinction, and the path.

What is suffering? Namely the suffering of birth and of old age, the suffering of illness, the suffering of sorrow, of pity, and of affliction, the suffering of association with detested ones, the suffering of separation from loved ones, and the suffering when one cannot obtain one’s wish. In short, one’s experiences of the five aggregates are suffering.

(Scriptural Text: Turning of the Wheel of the Law,  Expounded by Buddha)