Answer by Suminda Sirinath S. Dharmasena for Why is dukkha bad?

Dukkha arises from any feeling which you would perceive:

• pain - this on itself is painful
• pleasure - this is painful when you part with it
• neither pleasure nor painful - this will also change into pure pain or pleasure followed by the pain of parting with it as you still creating conditions for future existance

These sensations or feelings arise from the perception that an experience is:

• favorable - pleasure
• unfavorable - pain
• neutral - neither pain nor pleasure

All these experiences are conditioned. When the conditioning factor disappears so does the sensation associated with. The conditioning factors are not permanent nor in your control to keep experiencing pleasure. Also you might get bored with an experience and then you perceiving this as favorable experience will change where by changing the sensation or feeling experience.

There are few things happen when you experience a sensation of feeling:

• pleasure - develop greed to experience more
• pain - you develop aversion towards it and want to get rid of it or experience less of it
• neutral - you are ignorant of the fact that you are still in the process of creating future experiences whereby you will experience pain

With the above reaction your mind start creating thoughts on:

• in the future I should be like this or do as such
• in the past I should have done as such

Also in striving to realise the sensation you crave for, you would take action which in some cases might not be wholesome.

All the above creates conditioning (Sankhara) for future experiences which again will be unsatisfactory. The conditioning are from 3 sources which are discussed above:

• mental conditioning arising from perception and sensation
• verbal conditioning arising from thinking and pondering, this is called verbal as you need to think and form the speech before you talk
• bodily conditioning tied with the breath, when you are to do something unwholesome you would be agitated hence when you plan and execute your breath will be hard

So the objective of Buddhist meditation is to examine this perceiving (favorable, unfavorable, neutral) and sensation or feelings (pleasure, pain, neutral) objectively or equanimously knowing the to arise and pass away so you do not lose the balance of your mind and create further conditioning (Sankhara) which keep you rolling in misery or unsatisfactoriness (Dukkha).

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