— Modern formulation of the second noble truth; cf. Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta
About this quote
हिन्दी में
दुःख की जड़ आसक्ति है।
What it means
The sentence is a diagnosis with a location. It does not say suffering is caused by loss, illness or bad luck; it says the cause is the grip we keep on things — the demand that what we hold stay as it is and stay ours. The word doing the work is root: call something a root and you have implied it can be reached, that pain has a mechanism and not merely a history.
It is worth keeping because it can be tested in small cases within a day. The popular reading turns it into advice to care about nobody, which is not what the line says — it names attachment, the clinging, not affection or duty. A parent can love a child completely and still be holding on to a version of that child who no longer exists; the line says it is the second thing that hurts.
What it teaches you
When something hurts, write down the exact expectation you were holding — ‘the money would still be there’, ‘he would answer by evening’ — and notice that the size of the pain tracks how firmly you had booked that clause, not how large the event was. The clauses you can restate as a preference rather than a requirement usually stop stinging, and the ones you cannot are the real inventory of what you are gripping.
अर्थ और सीख
यह पंक्ति दुःख का कारण घटना में नहीं, हमारी पकड़ में ढूँढ़ती है — किसी चीज़ या व्यक्ति के वैसा ही बने रहने की ज़िद में। इसका अर्थ प्रेम छोड़ना नहीं है, बल्कि यह देखना है कि चोट वस्तु से नहीं, उससे चिपके रहने से आती है। अगली बार दुःख हो तो पूछिए कि मैंने कौन-सी अपेक्षा थाम रखी थी।
Where it comes from
A compressed statement of the Buddha’s second noble truth — that suffering arises from craving (tanha). As a single English sentence it is a modern formulation; the doctrine itself is stated across the Pali Canon, notably in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the Buddha’s first discourse.
