Only Suffering & the Cessation of Suffering

by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

The Pali Canon twice quotes the Buddha as saying, Pubbe c’ahaṁ etarahi ca dukkhañ c’eva paññapemi, dukkhassa ca nirodhaṁ. This is usually translated as, “Formerly and now, I teach only suffering and the cessation of suffering,” with the emphasis on the “only.” In other words, this translation emphasizes the fact that the Buddha’s teaching had a clear focus, treating nothing but issues related to suffering and its end, and avoiding issues that would distract from that aim.

This interpretation follows the Commentary on both of the discourses where this statement appears: MN 22 and SN 22:86. There it says that “suffering” here covers the first two noble truths—suffering and its origination—while “the cessation of suffering” covers the third and fourth: the cessation of suffering and the path to that cessation. It then affirms that the Buddha taught just the four noble truths. In other words, the Commentary agrees that the original sentence declares that the Buddha’s teachings have an exclusive focus: They deal only with issues relevant to understanding suffering and the way to its end.

Somewhere along the line, even this exclusive an emphasis wasn’t enough for a translator who decided to ramp it up, rendering the Buddha’s statement as, “I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering.” This translation has become popular, and has given rise to some strange speculations on how suffering and the end of suffering can be one thing, such as the idea that suffering ends when you accept it. But all that speculation is based on thin air: The Buddha never said, “one thing and one thing only.” He just said, “only.”

Or did he?

Recently, it’s been claimed that even the “only” wasn’t part of the Buddha’s original intention. Instead, he was simply saying that he taught both suffering and the end of suffering, leaving open the possibility that he taught many other things as well. Because this interpretation weakens the Buddha’s statement, blunting its force and scattering its focus, it’s worth looking into the arguments for weakening it in this way.

The primary argument is based on a small point of grammar: what it means to add emphasis to the word “and” in Pali. When you say “x and y” in that language, you express it this way: “x ca y ca.” If you want to add emphasis to a word or phrase, you add the word eva, which means many things, depending on context, such as “only,” “just,” or “indeed.” If you wanted to add emphasis to “x ca y ca,” you’d add the eva to the first ca, eliding the two words into c’eva. That’s what happens in the Buddha’s statement: dukkhañ c’eva … dukkhassa ca nirodhaṁ.

The question is, what does it mean to add emphasis to “x ca y ca”? Standard Pali grammars state that the construction c’eva … ca has one and only one idiomatic meaning: “both x and y.” In other words, in this context, the eva loses its meaning as “only” or “just,” and maintains simply the meaning, “indeed.”

If you check Margaret Cone’s excellent A Dictionary of Pali, you find that she supports this interpretation: The only meaning she gives for c’eva … ca is “both… and.” So, from a grammatical point of view, it would seem that the recent argument is airtight: The Buddha is just saying that suffering and the end of suffering are among the many things he taught, which could be aimed at purposes other than bringing suffering to an end.

However, the argument is not as airtight as it seems. A thorough search of the Pali Canon shows that c’eva … ca has more than one meaning. In particular, there are instances where it clearly doesn’t mean “both… and,” and instead has to mean “only… and.”

A few examples: In MN 93, the Buddha states, yona-kambojesu aññesu ca paccantimesu janapadesu dv’eva vaṇṇā: ayyo c’eva dāso ca. “In Yona, Kamboja, and other outlying countries, there are only two castes: just master and slave.”

For people raised in India, the fact of two castes instead of four would automatically carry the meaning, “just master and slave,” and not “both master and slave.”

In the monastic rules concerning a monk or a nun alone with a person of the opposite gender, such as the aniyata rules, the phrase “one with one” is explained:

In these cases, the emphasis is not on the fact that both are there. It’s on the fact that they’re the only ones there.

This means that the grammatical construction c’eva … ca can add emphasis to a simple “and” in one of two ways: either inclusive emphasis (both… and) or exclusive emphasis (only… and). Which way the emphasis goes will have to depend on context.

So if we want to understand the meaning of what the Buddha said he taught, we have to look at the contexts in which he makes the statements. We find that in both cases, someone has falsely attributed a teaching to him — falsely, not in the sense that the Buddha’s position on the topic in question is being misrepresented, but in the sense that he’s being misrepresented as taking a position on a topic he refused to address to begin with.

In MN 22, the Buddha is responding to the unfriendly accusation that he taught the annihilation of a true existing self. That’s an issue he refused to address. In MN 2, for example, he states that questions concerning the past, future, or present existence of the self are not worth paying attention to, because they lead to a “thicket,” a “wilderness,” a “fetter” of views.

In SN 22:86 he’s responding to one of his students who had told some other sectarians that the Buddha — rather than describing an awakened being after death as existing, not existing, both, or neither — actually described such a person in another way. This, despite the fact that the Buddha on many occasions refused to take a stand on this issue at all (DN 9; MN 72).

If the Buddha had been accused of teaching only suffering, it would make sense for him to emphasize that he taught both suffering and the end of suffering. But on these occasions, that’s not the accusation. He’s being accused of holding a position on a topic unrelated to the question of how to put an end to suffering. If he were to respond to these accusations with a simple, “I teach both suffering and the end of suffering,” the proper response would be, “What does that have to do with what I just said?” But when he says, “I teach only suffering and the cessation of suffering,” his response is right for the occasion, explaining why he didn’t take a position on the issue in question.

In both situations prior to making the statement, he has already been discussing a number of issues related to the topics of suffering and its cessation, so it’s clear from the context that when he says, “suffering and the cessation of suffering,” he means to include anything relevant to these two topics.

There have been two more arguments for why the Buddha’s statement should be read, “both suffering and the cessation of suffering.” One is that the Buddha is actually on record as teaching many other topics aside from suffering and the cessation of suffering, such as how beings are born as nāgas — magical serpents — or how a husband and wife should run their household. But how are these topics not related to suffering and the cessation of suffering? All forms of birth come under the first noble truth, so the information the Buddha gives on how beings take birth on the various levels of the cosmos is directly related to understanding suffering. What’s worth noting is that he gives only sketchy information on the realms of the cosmos, and nothing unrelated to the issues of suffering and its cessation.

Similarly, how a husband and wife run a household will have a huge impact on their ability to practice the Dhamma for the sake of the end of suffering. Here again, the Buddha treats the issue only insofar as it’s related to Dhamma practice.

The second added argument is that the Buddha’s statement about what he teaches appears only twice in the Pali Canon, and so shouldn’t be given too much importance. This assertion is misguided in two ways: The first is that there are many important teachings that appear in the Canon only once, such as the Buddha’s statement that intention is the kamma, or his description of the two nibbāna elements. So the number of times a teaching appears is not necessarily a measure of its importance.

Second, when we follow the Commentary’s understanding of “suffering and the cessation of suffering” as covering all four noble truths, we see that statements focusing all of the Dhamma on this issue fill the Canon: Ven. Sāriputta’s statement that all the Dhamma is encompassed by the four noble truths in the same way that all the footprints of animals with feet are encompassed by the footprint of the elephant (MN 28); the Buddha’s simile of the handful of leaves (SN 56:31); his simile of the man shot with the arrow who’s unwilling to have it removed until he knows how the arrow was made (MN 63), and many more. Add to that the many lists of questions that the Buddha refused to answer on the grounds that they weren’t conducive to putting an end to suffering, and instead actually got in the way.

In fact, it’s this primary focus on solving the problem of suffering that makes the Buddha’s teachings so useful and unique. Which is why it’s best to stick with the traditional translation of the Buddha’s statement in this case:

“Formerly and now, I teach only suffering and the cessation of suffering.”

Keep the emphasis on the “only.” It’s important.