An earlier essay on the Four Principles of Socratic/Platonic reasoning described the Fourth Principle as The Principle of Analogy and Participation. This essay shows how this principle can be used for a rational understanding of Nibbana as something like a Platonic Form.
I begin with a passage from Plato's Symposium, in which Plato uses the image of a mental ladder to explain how the Principle of Analogy and Participation to the concept of Beauty, which Plato considers here a "virtue." He says that a person who wants to understand the perfect Platonic Form of Beauty needs to begin her acquaintance with beauty by falling in love with one beautiful body, which represents beauty in a less perfect but more accessible form. The beauty of a beautiful body is easily grasped but imperfect. Grasping this beauty constitutes a necessary first step, the "bottom rungs" of a mental ladder, at the top of which lies the perfect but hard-to-grasp Platonic Form of Beauty.
Applying this to Buddhist Nibbana: If Nibbana is like a perfect Platonic Form, it is something whose admirable goodness is difficult to grasp immediately in itself, just by reading Buddhist descriptions of it. To begin understanding its goodness, we need to begin by trying to find analogies, concrete examples exhibiting this same kind of goodness, in less perfect but more accessible form.
Note, applied to Buddhism, the image of the Ladder here does not represent practical steps one takes to reach Nibbana (this would be meditation practices such as Vipassana). It represents rather intellectual steps needed to understand Nibbana as the perfection of some particular kind of goodness.
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Some passages in the Pali Canon speak of Nibbana as "indescribable." One can easily get the impression that only a person who has experienced Nibbana (very rare, according to Buddhist lore) can know what Nibbana is.
But this cannot be completely true. Bringing about the fundamental internal transformation and state of mind called Nibbana requires an enormous amount of sustained hard work over a lifetime (perhaps many lifetimes, in Buddhist lore). Why would anyone try to achieve this very difficult goal if they had no idea what it is? In particular, why would they regard this as the supreme good in human life, worth sacrificing many other obvious goods for, if they did not have at least an intuitive grasp of its goodness?
The Platonist principle of analogy provides a rational way of dealing with this issue. According to this principle, illustrated in the Ladder image in Plato's Symposium (excerpted above) abstract Platonic Forms at the top of the Ladder, representing the perfection of particular kinds of goodness, are most difficult to understand. Their goodness is not something directly accessible to our understanding. What is directly accessible to our understanding are imperfect concrete examples of goodness.
For example, we easily grasp the admirable courage of a soldier we witness bravely standing at his post. Socrates shows by counterexamples that "standing at your post and not running away" is imperfect and imprecise as a definition of the essence of admirable courage, an essence which can only be grasped through an abstract, difficult to understand concept of courage. But we cannot directly intuit this astract perfect essence, but must mentally abstract (extract) it from such imperfect concrete examples, using them as "bottom rungs" on Plato's Ladder to begin our mental climb to a mental grasp of perfect Forms at the top. In his Seventh Letter, Plato insists that such mental abstracting must be done by each person for herself, since a mental grasp of perfect Platonic Forms cannot be something conveyed in words from one person to another.
Along these lines, let us take Nibbana to be something like a Platonic Form, the perfection of some particular kind of human goodness. The earlier assignment asked students to begin with imperfect ideas of a particular virtue, and work upward on Plato's ladder to a more perfect definition of this same virtue. In the case of Buddhism, we already have an idea of Nibbana as some kind of world-transcending excellence lying at the top of a Platonic ladder. Our task is to come to a rational understanding of Nibbana as a human excellence, by reconstructing the lower rungs of this ladder.
It is difficult for one person to bring another person to a mental grasp of the perfect goodness of Nibbana, by words alone. But according to the Platonist principle of analogy, if Nibbana is the perfection of some kind of goodness, not directly accessible to our understanding, we should be able to find some imperfect examples of this same kind of goodness that are more accessible to our understanding, and use these as starting points ("bottom rungs" on Plato's Ladder) for beginning to understand perfect Nibbana (at the top of the Ladder).
Concretely speaking, what this means is that Nibbana is not completely unlike more ordinary ways of being. Most people probably already have characteristics and habits of mind that are something like (analogous to) Nibbana. These are characteristics, such as calmness and self-confidence, whose admirable goodness we can easily understand, although compared to Nibbana, ordinary calmness and self-confidence represent this goodness in a very imperfect way. But this is the nature of all perfect Goodness -- the goodness of perfect Goodness cannot be directly and immediately grasped. We need to find imperfect examples of this same kind of goodness to use as accessible starting points for understanding perfect goodness not directly accessible to our understanding.
The principle of analogy is closely related to the Platonist idea of "participation." That is, Plato does not picture perfect Platonic virtue-Forms as ideals which a person can expect to fully achieve in their perfection. No concrete person is perfect. But there are degrees of goodness, and one's goal should be to approximate or "participate in" the perfection of perfect Forms like Courage and Love, by becoming more and more like them, not expecting ever to be completely like them.
In the same way, achieving Nibbana is not an all-or-nothing affair. A person who has some degree of independent self-confidence already "participates in" Nibbana to some degree. For such a person, making progress toward Nibbana is not a matter of gaining habits of mind completely different from her present habits of mind, but of achieving more and more perfect forms of these same mental habits.
(This also helps address a common objection to Buddhism: Is it really possible to achieve complete Nibbana, as the complete cessation of Tanha, Upadana, and Dukkha? One answer would be: How do we know what is possible to human beings given a lifetime of strenuous working toward this particular goal? But the other answer is: From a Platonist point of view, it doesn't matter. One's goal should be to approximate or "participate in" the goodness of Nibbana to a greater and greater degree. What matters is the assurance that, in doing so, one is becoming more and more admirable the more one becomes like this perfect ideal.)
The principle of analogy and participation is the fourth of the four principles of Socratic/Platonic reasoning explained in an earlier essay. The present essay suggests some particular analogies to Nibbana, less perfect but more familiar and accessible to human understanding, as starting points for understanding the more difficult concept of perfect Nibbana.
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If we try to describe early Buddhism by reference to a single core concept, it seems the most plausible candidate for such a concept is the idea of fulfilling one's quest for a meaningful existence in a certain state of one's own being, fully meaningful in itself, hence not feeling the need of any source of meaning outside itself. The Pali Canon frequently pictures such a state as "true seclusion." True seclusion is not physical seclusion, only physical disconnection from society. It is a difficult to achieve mental state of internal independence that is also described in the Pali Canon as a kind of "exalted pleasure." This is the kind of "perfection of one's own being" urged in early Buddhist writing.
There do exist some analogies to this kind of perfection accessible in ordinary experience. For example, many individuals do experience moments when just existing can be felt as meaningful, moments in which one does not feel a need for any particular connection or involvement or activity in order to make life feel worthwhile.
But for the person who has never had positive experiences of being alone, and satisfied with the meaningfulness of their own existence as alone, it might take a very great imaginative effort to imagine how the Buddhist "seclusion" ideal could be so extremely inspiring to anyone and make someone think this ideal is worth devoting one's life to.
Perhaps for some people this is too far beyond their current imaginative abilities. For many people, experience of what is admirable and meaningful in life is almost exclusively tied to social virtues, connected to relationships and interactions with others, social achievements, contributing to society, etc. From this perspective, this Buddhist ideal of perfecting one's own being can only appear as the negation of what makes life meaningful. In this case, the principle of analogy suggests that we begin with things more familiar to us. If you cannot imagine being inspired by any ideal not involving social interactions, then focus on the ways in which one result of progress toward Nibbana might be improving your relationships with others. These would be manifestations ("appearances") of Nibbana, not Nibbana itself, but all knowledge of goodness has to begin with appearances. (Just as all knowledge of Platonic Beauty Itself has to begin with a concrete experience of beauty, like falling in love with one beautiful body.)
The main intent of the following examples is to illustrate the general kind of thing that must be done when using some aspects of Socratic/Platonic thought as a basis for a critical and contextual interpretation of Buddhist Nibbana as a kind of transcendent Goodness. It represents what I have been able to imagine as starting points in ordinary experience for understanding what kind of goodness Nibbana might be the perfection of. These more familiar experiences are not Nibbana, but are rough and partial analogies to Nibbana. The following discussions are based on the Platonic idea that perfect transcendent Goodness is always difficult to understand, which is why we need to find starting points in more accessible but more imperfect and more everyday examples of this same kind of goodness.
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Jane is a secretary and housewife. Her days at work are spent being constantly pulled from one demand to another. She answers the phone, begins to respond to an angry customer, but is interrupted by her boss who wants her to type out a nine-page memo and give it to him before he leaves in 15 minutes. She begins typing but then her computer breaks down and she has to spend several minutes fixing the computer problem. When she goes home her attention is constantly drawn from one task to another regarding her home and family.
If this keeps up, it is not a very meaningful existence. Let us describe this by saying that Jane has no constant, single, unified "self." She doesn't know what she wants because she never has a chance to get in touch with her own wants. Suppose her boss and family realize her plight and give Jane a summer off to do whatever she wants. She spends the first month by herself in a beautiful cabin in a lovely part of the Maine woods. She gets plenty of rest so her mind is refreshed. She spends her time just doing whatever she feels like at the moment, paying careful attention to unique occupations or experiences that she finds most meaningful, playing or listening to certain kinds of music, drawing wildflower pictures, watching birds and animals, and so on. What matters is not which particular things occupy her attention at the moment, but that there has been a shift in what directs her attention. Before, her attention was constantly pulled to and fro by external demands completely outside of her control. Her existence consisted really of a series of disconnected responses to external demands. It was not the existence of a single self remaining constant through all these experiences.
Now her attention is inner directed, determined by what is inside her, what she herself is able to feel as most meaningful and fulfilling. She gradually develops a much stronger, definite, and deeper sense of self, having its own unity and constancy, a center of gravity that remains constant throughout her many different occupations and experiences. She becomes much more aware of being a single self remaining the same through many diverse responses to diverse external involvements. We could say that this is a "deeper" self, a self that gains more depth by being able to be more constant, to develop as a unique self remaining constant through many experiences. This in contrast to the previous state in which Jane was skimming about on the surface of life, so to speak, passing through a disconnected series of occupations in which she herself was not deeply engaged.
(To make clear how "Plato's Ladder" applies to this example: It is not that Jane's initial "fragmented" state like a bottom rung of Plato's Ladder, and her new inner-directed self is a step up, climbing the ladder toward Nibbana. This would be to take Plato's Ladder as a metaphor describing one individual's personal progress toward achieving Nibbana. "Plato's Ladder" is rather an image of how we can understand Nibbana as the perfection of some kind of human goodness. The point of picturing a change in Jane is rather that the before-and-after contrast makes more clear the admirable character of Jane's new unified and inner-directed state of mind. It is this unified and inner directed state of mind, easily recognizable as admirable, that is the bottom rung on a Platonic Ladder helping us to understand Nibbana as the perfection of this same kind of admirable goodness at the top of the ladder.)
This example, focusing on developing a single, unified, and constant self might seem to be directly contrary to the Buddhist doctrine of an-atta, non-self, which means to reject the goal of the Bhagavad Gita's Hinduism, "finding one's true atta/atman." But let us try out the idea that internalizing the Buddhist an-atta doctrine would not amount to completely rejecting this quest for a unified and constant Atman/self, but fulfilling this quest.
The quest for Atman is inspired by the uplifting experience of a certain kind of goodness which the Bhagavad Gita describes as the experience of one's own Atman, or deeper self. Buddhist writings advocate very similar meditation techniques, which in beginning stages are accompanied by what one Pali-Canon passage calls "sublime pleasures," i.e. very satisfying experiences that are also uplifting and raise one's life to a higher (more "sublime") level. The Buddhist writings that advocate going beyond this to a stage where the pleasure has disappeared, should be understood as descriptions of states that contain this same goodness on an even higher level.
This example of Jane does not include meditation. But it has several things in common with the way Hindu and Buddhist writings describe the goals and results of meditation. The problem meditation means to overcome is the problem of an "uncontrolled" mind being involuntarily pulled to and fro by a stream of constantly changing perceptual stimuli. At some stages, meditation includes "concentration" - not concentration on anything in particular in order to learn something, but concentration for its own sake. A single-pointed mind achieved by concentrative meditation is associated with a more satisfied mind, even a "blissful" mind.
We could understand this report of meditators on a purely psychological level, as referring simply to some very pleasurable internal experiences. But this would not explain why this is thought of as the experience of something "higher," raising one's life to a more sublime level. As long as we stay with the experiences of meditators, this also puts the experiences involved beyond the comprehension of non-meditators. My assumption in giving the example of Jane is that the goodness of states experienced by meditators is a kind of goodness that can be experienced in other areas of life as well, more familiar than to many than the experience of meditation. Meditators are experiencing at more intense and advanced levels the same kind of goodness that Jane experienced in her cottage in Maine. In the ideal case, if they are really experiencing a higher level of this goodness, they should be thought of as just further up on the same Platonic ladder Jane is on, achieving higher levels of the same kind of goodness Jane has achieved.
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Last year, Melissa felt in need of constant stimulation and constant activity. She had to be either listening to music, chatting with someone, or engaged in some kind of task making her feel productive. She also needed constant change and variety, and got easily bored if she tried to stick to one occupation for very long at a time. She could not stand being alone and silent with nothing going on for any length of time, something she could only feel as boring and extremely uncomfortable in its meaninglessness. Like Jane in the previous example, this made her existence a series of disconnected involvements.
This year she has met Bob, who likes to go down to the ocean by himself and watch the waves for hours. He gets Melissa to go sit with him for gradually longer periods of time, and she eventually comes to like this, and now prefers to go by herself to be alone with her thoughts and feelings, enjoying her own company. She finds a certain deep satisfaction in just being, without needing any specific stimulation or any feeling of being engaged in a productive task. Whereas before she found solitude and silence merely empty and boring, now she has discovered a source of full, enriching, deeply satisfying inner peace.
This second before-and-after example helps explain the Buddhist emphasis on disconnection from all perceptual stimuli. In Buddhist writings, this tends to be described in purely negative terms as an absence of all stimuli. But a mere absence of stimuli can be merely empty and boring, whereas many Buddhists obviously found this state immensely uplifting and fulfilling. The case of Melissa helps make clear the possible positive character that absence of stimuli and activity might have - when this absence is not a mere absence, but provides space for an experience of deeply satisfying peace to develop. It is this satisfying peacefulness, within the range of familiar experience, that serves again as the bottom rung on a Platonic Ladder helping us to understand the goodness of the very unfamiliar concept of Nibbana, which should be understood as the perfection of this same kind of goodness.
This helps explain the attractiveness of what the Pali Canon describes as a series of progressively more formless jhanas achieved by advanced meditators. This series begins with concentration on an external object, proceeds to concentration on an internal image of this same object, imaginatively removes this object to concentrate on the space where the object was, and on and on until there is just consciousness existing without awareness of any perceptual object at all. Think of this as the perfection of finding deeply satisfying fulfillment in just being, a kind of goodness Melissa felt in being alone by the sea. This would make sense of the implied Buddhist claim that the most advanced jhana states constitute a very high spiritual achievement, potentially raising one's life to a higher level.
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Note that these remarks about Jane and Melissa do not imply that the goodness illustrated in these cases is the only kind of goodness there is, or that one cannot achieve equally high levels of Goodness by having an exciting and highly productive life. These cases are meant to illustrate a very particular kind of Goodness which Buddhist Nibbana might be the perfection of, acknowledging that there are an indefinite number of other kinds of Goodness, other possible ways of leading a great life, that are very different from the kind of Goodness that the Buddhist way of life takes as its focus.
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Last year Carlos was a very insecure person. He had very little self-confidence, and a relatively low and fragile self-image. This made him very self-conscious, highly sensitive to personal slights. In some ways his insecurity made him very self-centered, constantly alert to how things other people do might reflect approval or disapproval of him, supporting or undermining his sense of self-worth.
This year Carlos feels much more secure and self-confident, because he has achieved some impressive successes at his job, for which he has gotten promoted, and because Meiling is in love with him and makes him feel very special everyday. This gives him a much more relaxed attitude to life in general. Last year, if someone expressed anger toward him, it would throw him into turmoil and depression for days. This year such incidences are just a minor blip in his life. Last year if his boss praised someone else, his self-centeredness would cause him to take this personally, thinking "why her and not me?" This year he is able to feel glad for other people's successes and promotions without immediately comparing their status to his own.
In this example one can see how coming to develop more "self-confidence" of a certain kind can clearly make one a better person. Paradoxically, self-confidence can make a person less self-centered, less "self-conscious," less conscious of a self-image that needs to be protected in all interactions with the world.
On the present view, this is part of the meaning of the an-atta doctrine. Last year, low self-confidence tended to make Carlos self-consciously and self-centeredly "take things personally." He felt the approval of others as something "essential-to-me," i.e. essential to his sense of self-esteem. This is the opposite of regarding such approval as an-atta, "not me," not "essential-to-me" in this way. Because of his improved self-confidence, Carlos this year is able to regard the approval of others as "not essential to me," he has an identity less dependent on the approval of others.
Carlos has made some progress toward the Buddhist ideal. This example serves as one good "bottom rung" on a Platonic ladder helping us to grasp the kind of goodness that Nibbana is the perfection of. But Carlos' imperfection in relation to ideal Nibbana is evident in the fact that his sense of self-esteem is still very dependent on specific things external to himself, liable to change beyond his control: his status at his job and the love of his wife Meiling. His "Craving" for "support" is still outward-directed, a reaching out for something external to himself to give him self-esteem and self-confidence.
He could progress further by beginning Buddhist meditation practice, learning the skill of non-reactive awareness, "stopping" this outward-reaching quest for support. At less advanced stages, he might come to depend on internal signs accompanying meditation, as for example certain pleasurable feelings resulting from deep meditative states. At the most advanced stage, he would not be dependent even on any such internal signs - - he would not experience any reaching out for anything belonging to the internal Khandhas. He would have an unshakeable, self-contained self-confidence.
But on the present interpretation, in the ideal case this complete non-dependence on particular confirming signs would not be a mere absence, but would be the perfection of self-confidence, which would paradoxically lead to an absence of self-consciousness, being less conscious of a self-image needing to be supported by any tangible signs, external or internal. This perfection of self-confidence is what would give him a deeply satisfying identity completely independent of any particular perceptible confirming signs, thus able to regard all perceptual objects as an-atta "not-me," "not-essential-to-me."
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Consider next several examples of people who have various unhealthy and unsatisfying addictions or obsessions.
Last year Beth was obsessed with having clean doorknobs in her apartment. She was constantly anxious and preoccupied about this, constantly checking the doorknobs for specks of dust, and got very upset if she could not maintain them in a spotless state. This year she has been able to become more relaxed about this. She still likes to have clean doorknobs, but this no longer constantly preoccupies her attention, and she can tolerate less than perfectly clean doorknobs, and is free to give her attention to things that give her life more meaning. This is a clear improvement.
Last year Sam had very low self-esteem and consequently was very needy. His neediness made him very dependent on his girlfriend Sue, a drug addict who constantly humiliated him, abused him, and exploited him to feed her drug habit. Sam put up with this because he had become extremely dependent on her, having what might be called a "love-addiction." His friends tried to tell him he was "throwing himself away," "selling himself short," and that no self-respecting person would put up with this. He did not deserve the Sue's treatment, and Sue was unworthy of the way he unreservedly submitted to all her treatment of him.
This year Sam finally listened to his friends and realized that his abusive relation to Sue amounted to a kind of self-betrayal. He really is worth more than this. Out of respect for himself, he broke up with Sue, and is on his way to becoming a self-respecting person, believing in himself and his own worth, seeking a relationship in which his partner recognizes this.
These examples illustrate a certain kind of self-betraying submission of oneself to external things or to other people, a submission which is both involuntary and unsatisfying. Such submission is a betrayal of one's personal being, one's own being as a person who deserves respect as a person, and who gives measured attention and care to other things and people who deserve this attention and care.
These examples illustrate the way in which obsessions and addictions can be related to lack of self-respect, and conversely why it is that self-respect can be an important virtue, an important kind of personal goodness.
As to their relation to Buddhism: Buddhist teachings also emphasize the involuntariness of our reactions to things. They generalize this and speak of it as something fundamental and pervasive in our relation to the world, accompanying all contact with perceptual objects. Whenever consciousness encounters any perceptual object, it "seeks support" in this object, and "grows, increases, and develops," as a result of this support.
In my reconstruction, this is due to the fact that a person is constantly trying to define her identity as a worthwhile person in relation to some relatively tangible perceptual object. It is just very difficult to feel oneself to be a worthwhile person without some specific relation to some specific perceptual objects. This difficulty is what makes support-seeking reactions an involuntary response to virtually all perceptions. This involuntariness is clearly implied in Buddhist teachings, in that these teachings assume that significant reduction in this kind of response cannot be brought about be mere will-power, but requires very long-term meditation practice.
Buddhist teachings also represent this reaching-out-for-support as a kind of mistaken displacement of concern for "self." People tend to try to find themselves in things external to themselves. In Buddhist language, they tend to regard these other things as Atta, "self." They turn their attention away from the real source of their worth as persons, that is, their own being as a human person, and regard things that are not-self as though they were "self." This misplacement can be represented as a kind of self-betrayal, illustrated in the above cases as a kind of abject submission of one's personal being to things not really deserving of such submission.
The above examples illustrate again a kind of shift in a person's center of gravity, a shift from external to internal focus, and why this shift can be something admirable and good. The shift is a kind of self-empowerment, a shift from being under the power of other things and other people, to a state where the person has a much stronger sense of self, able to react to on this basis.
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Three years ago Natasha was prone to get very upset or panic whenever there occurred any unexpected change in her normal life-routine. When unexpected traffic jams caused fifteen-minute delays in getting to work, she would spend this entire time internally fuming, and it put her in a bad mood for the rest of the day. When she lost her job due to downsizing this threw her into emotional turmoil for days. She couldn't stop thinking "Why is this happening to me?" "This should not be happening," alternately blaming herself, her boss, or the economic and political system that let this happen. Some days she was obsessed and preoccupied with these thoughts, unable to get them out of her mind. Other days she suffered an immobilizing depression. It took her several months to finally stop obsessing about the unfairness of her present plight, and finally start preparing herself for a new career and looking for a new job.
This year Natasha has developed a high degree of composure, the ability to flexibly adapt to unexpected and undesired changes. When she accidentally spilled coffee on her blouse just before going into an important meeting, she did was only momentarily flustered, but focused her attention entirely on positive responses, doing what she had to do to make the best of this unexpected turn of events. When she did the best she could do under the circumstances, she was entirely at peace with herself, whatever the outcome. When Natasha's husband died unexpectedly, she was very sad and mourned the loss of this dear and important person, but was not immobilized by this fundamental change in her life. She spent some time realizing and assessing the new limitations and possibilities of her new situation, and "rose to the occasion," focusing her energies on being the best person she could be and taking advantage of the best opportunities now available to her, not wasting emotional energy bemoaning her fate, resisting being in the new situation, or comparing the new undesired circumstances to the old life she had gotten used to and enjoyed so much.
I think this example illustrates the importance Buddhist teaching accords to accepting "impermanence," anicca. The fact that all the things we depend on might change at any moment is not especially difficult or controversial to accept as a theoretical truth. What is difficult is emotional flexibility and acceptance of actual or threatened change in those particular life-conditions we have come to depend on for our sense of self-worth or meaning in life. When a person defines her identity in relation to certain specific life conditions, she generally comes to feel these as permanent anchors for her sense that her life is a worthwhile, meaningful life. Actual or threatened changes in these anchors can make a person preoccupied with resisting these changes at all costs if they are threatened, or with resisting acknowledging and adapting to the changes when they occur. Emotionally internalizing the Buddhist teaching of anicca would give a person an emotional flexibility in adapting to unexpected changes. It also gives one a sense of composure in readily accepting the limitations of new circumstances and in realizing and creatively responding to the positive possibilities the new circumstances offer.
This also helps explain the importance accorded to Dukkha and overcoming Dukkha in Buddhist teachings. If dukkha is understood as "suffering" in general, it is clear why people would want to reduce or eliminate dukkha, but it is not at all clear why this is something admirable, rather than just an egocentric desire to lead a more pleasant life. Think however of Dukkha in specific relation to other Buddhist teachings. Dukkha is something caused by "Craving" (Tanha), and by the fact that the objects of craving are liable to change. Dukkha is something able to be greatly reduced or overcome by specific Buddhist meditation practices, and by gaining the ability to regard everything impermanent as non-self (an-atta). Taken together, all this suggests that dukkha is not just any kind of suffering, not even just any kind of mental or emotional discomfort. For example, being deeply moved by the loss of a loved-one might feel distressing or uncomfortable, but not all such sadness is due to self-centered feelings. People cry at movies, over unfortunate deaths of characters that play no part in their personal lives.
The Natasha example suggests a way that overcoming dukkha might be positively related to a higher level of Goodness in a person's life. That is, think of Dukkha as unproductive, immobilizing, inner turmoil, the specific result of resisting unexpected and unwanted change in those things one has come to depend on for a sense of self worth or meaning in life. Dukkha is not just unpleasant feelings as contrasted with pleasant feelings. It is rather paralyzing emotional turmoil resisting being in a new situation, as contrasted with composure, drawing on one's inner resources to rise to the occasion, to be one's best self in creative response following full acknowledgment of the new situation one is in.