Four Sufferings, Eight Sufferings

From time to time, I enjoy listening to the Yojijukugo series on Japanesepod101.com.

The latest one I heard, lesson 8, covered a very Buddhist-oriented yojijukugo that I thought was clever: shiku hakku (四苦八苦), which means “Four Sufferings, Eight Sufferings”. This originates from the Buddhist notion of the Four Sufferings:

1. Birth
2. Old Age
3. Sickness
4. Death

as well as the additional four kinds of suffering (for a total of 8):

• Not getting what you want.
• Encountering something you don’t like.
• Being separated from someone you like.
• Being around people you don’t like.

These are all elucidated in the Pali Canon’s sutra, the First Turning of the Wheel, or Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11):¹

“Now this, monks, is the noble truth of stress:1 Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful.

Now, this yojijukugo is a good example of Buddhist-terms in everyday Japanese-language use, because it’s used to denote a situation where someone struggles with something, like a project at work, or with a point in one’s life. The original Buddhist meaning has become vernacular instead. For example:

先月のぷプロジェクトが四苦八苦した。

sengetsu no purojekuto ga shikuhakku shita.

“I struggled with last month’s project”.

Just something amusing I wanted to pass along.

¹ The related sutra in the Ekottara Agama doesn’t seem to mention them. Perhaps they’re elsewhere, but I haven’t found it yet in the Mahayana texts, hence the use of the Pali Canon version.