Question:

You note that there are three kinds of dukkha. I do not understand the difference between the dukkha caused by constant change and that caused by the compositional nature of life.  The latter appears to me to be just another way of saying constant change.  Is there an essential difference between these two kinds of dukkha?

Phillip Replies:

This question has been answered by Meg Agnew, senior vipassana students  and moderator of the Dancing with Life Discussion Board on this site:

MEG:

This is a frequently asked question because for most of us it can be challenging to discern the difference between viparinama dukkha, the suffering caused by life's constant changes, and sankhara dukkha, the third kind of dhukkha that has more to do with the insubstantiality of our experience. On p.48 of DWL there's a good description of how our experience of each moment is dependent on the 5 aggregates (contact, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness) coming together to create the moment. This happens instantaneously and usually without our noticing it but it is stressful to our nervous system. I have heard Phillip compare this process to that of running a movie. Our life is composed of individual moments, like the frames of a movie, and it takes energy to string them together so that our experience appears more continuous or held together. At times we feel fatigued by the effort this requires, even though it's happening beyond our conscious awareness. I recently had the opportunity to ask Joseph Goldstein for his thoughts on sankhara dukkha. His response to my question was "Do you have to clean your house?" He continued to talk about the almost infinite number of possibilities for disorder and how we are always having to work to keep things from falling apart. In DWL, Phillip gives having to eat or brush our teeth as examples of this constant maintenance that is required to live. So even though change is an aspect of this kind of dukkha, just as it is a constant aspect of life on planet Earth, sankhara dukkha is primarily about the insubstantiality of our experience. I hope this helps.
With metta,
Meg