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In short, Christian suffering is the acute pain of a fallen world, and Buddhist suffering is the deep dissatisfaction that comes from attachment. Read more here: https://bigenc.ru/religious_studies/text/1971058
Buddhism sees suffering as an obscuration – “if you find it difficult to live, then you are living incorrectly.” And if so, then it means that you need to do something to live “correctly”, that is, not to suffer. This approach is used in all modern methods of psychological counseling and coaching, which consist in finding ways to solve problems, which ultimately means getting rid of suffering.
In Buddhism, this is a completely unnatural state. It is the result of bad karma. It is characteristic of all living things and life in general. The goal is to stop suffering in yourself and others.
In Christianity, suffering is redemptive. To suffer for Christ, to bear the cross, seems to be also a special vocation for believers. In general, suffering and grieving is more useful than having fun and having fun. Nothing is said about the cessation of suffering.
The Christian understanding of suffering is not limited to physical pain. What do souls in hell suffer from, for example? They don't have a body. And the Christian understanding of righteousness as a state of consciousness is closer to the Buddhist one than to the Old Testament one.
Christianity
Suffering is the result of the sinfulness of humanity and serves as a punishment, you can not get rid of suffering yourself, you should endure and thank the Lord for the sent test.
Buddhism
Suffering is the result of wrong behavior, if you change your behavior, the suffering will go away. Of course, you will have to change it a lot:)
Christianity – people are to blame ,терп now be patient.
Buddhism – if you don't like sitting on nails, you can move to another chair
To begin with, the concept of “suffering” is not so well understood by Christians of different directions. Catholics focus more on listening to physical suffering and torment, while Orthodox People prefer psychological suffering. For example, for the Orthodox, the most terrible torment of Christ is despair in the garden of Gethsemane, and not crucifixion. Mel Gibson beautifully illustrated The Passion of the Christ from a Catholic point of view. Protestants (returning to the Jewish interpretation) perceive suffering in the context of the general well-being of the worldly vale. After all, among the early Jews, the afterlife was extremely similar to the earthly one.�
Buddhists are more metaphysical. Their “suffering” is any irritable impulse, a fundamental category of being. Materialists have the concept of “reflection” as a way for matter to interact with the environment. This can be called “suffering” if we explain Buddhism in terms of our language categories.
The fact is that in Buddhism there is no unambiguous attitude to this concept. And one of them looks like this: to get rid of suffering, you need to stop making a choice – there is no choice, there is no suffering.�
In Christianity, this thing is presented as a kind of test, a certain boundary that the Lord sends to a person. In the very act of resurrection of Jesus, who went through suffering, and rose again on the third day, lies the deep truth of transformation, rebirth, enlightenment. This is the culmination of the Bible's teaching.�
And in its essence, suffering is only a certain discomfort that different religious movements are trying to overcome, and each in its own way, nothing more.
The Pali word “Dukha” is often translated as “suffering” (and not only in Russian, but also, for example, in English). However, this is too narrow a translation, because dukha is any anxiety, dissatisfaction, restlessness, something unpleasant, and not necessarily directly physical suffering. It is believed that the inhabitants of the divine worlds are also subject to dukha in one form or another, which may experience, for example, boredom. Here you can simply substitute the word “dukha” for the word suffering and it will immediately become clearer:
And what is the noble truth about suffering?
and birth is suffering, and old age is suffering, and death is suffering,
and sorrow, lamentation, pain, despondency, despair-suffering.
With the unloved connection – suffering, with the beloved separation-suffering,
and not getting what you want is suffering.
In short, the five appropriated aggregates (upadana khandha) are suffering.
That is, roughly speaking, the Rolling Stones song (I Can Get No) Satisfaction is also about dukha.�
It also differs from Christian suffering in its inevitability. Dukha is a manifestation of life, as in the joke that if you are 40 years old, you wake up in the morning and nothing hurts, then you are dead. 🙂 Until we reach enlightenment, we will experience it in one form or another. Dukha, unlike Christian suffering, does not purify the soul (especially since there is no soul in the Christian sense in Buddhism). It simply exists as an unavoidable element of existence.
These are two different concepts, in Russian there is no word that would denote suffering from Buddhism, so it is customary to take the most appropriate meaning. Its essence is that a person feels discomfort, something that prevents him from being happy and the reason for this is human vices. In Christianity, suffering is often understood as the physical suffering that Jesus experienced, or the hardships that believers put themselves through in order to moderate their vices.
Funny thing is, Buddhists tend to get rid of vices so they don't have to suffer, while Christians tend to suffer to get rid of vices. But of course, this does not apply to everyone.