The word dukkha is at the heart of the Buddhist understanding of life. It essentially means that life has an element of stress that is independent of, and resistant to, all our efforts to make it perfect or carefree. Translating the word is not so easy….

‘All is suffering’ is a bad modernist translation.

What the Buddha really said is:

It’s all a mixed bag. Shit is complicated.

Everything’s f**ked up, [yet] Everything’s gorgeous.

Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems