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"Dukkha" is usually translated as "suffering" but it's more like "nihilism". The pain of nothingness. This would make sense as ascetics sought out the Buddha. They had already given up worldly desires and so were facing a different kind suffering.

Together you could say that "Wanting meaning creates meaninglessness."

On to Anicca and Anatta, the two crucial understandings. Anicca is translated as "impermanence". But it's more like the "inability to maintain things as we like." This is due to Pali and Sanskrit having a lot of similarity so translations were hamfisted and made assumptions.

(Similar to how Japanese/Korean/Chinese will use the same characters but they'll have vastly different meanings in some cases while having the same meaning in others.)

The opposite of Anicca is Nicca which is the ability to maintain things as we like. I'd summarize Nicca as "Believing ideals to be reality." and Anicca as "Ideals are by definition not reality."

What's important here IMO is that every act of consciousness is a form of virtual reality. From our sense organs to our mental processing, we're actually incredibly removed from 'actual' reality.

Anatta is usually translated as "No self" and has probably lead more people astray than any other mistranslation. Anatta, like anicca is a negation. It negates the world "Atta" which as a noun means "essence" and as a verb means "control".

Together they mean to control something by understanding it. E.g. if you understand the True Name of something, you have power over it.

Anatta means to understand that In the Beginning, there were no names. Meaning that there's no such thing as True Naming something.

It's like playing with a fake steering wheel and thinking we're driving. Either we self delude and match our movements to the outside world, or we angrily try to steer away from what we don't like ineffectively.

Believing we can True Name ourselves and that "I" am suffering is a way of amassing suffering into a container. The container feels a victim. This is b/c we 'obviously' have ownership over ourselves and 'should' be in control of ourselves.

Another form of this mistake is believing that you've penetrated to the real essence of something, creating for yourself a prior that is non-updateable by sense data.

Nibbana or nirvana is often interpreted as a state of perpetual bliss but is better translated as "Cooling Down." The opposite of a tense, effortful, clenching up. It is the opposite of Tanha.

The happiness that results from nibbana is due to relinquishing the need to control and arrange reality to match up to our mental projections.

It's like the comfortable silence with a good friend, a good meal eaten to perfect satiation, post-orgasm, etc...

Upadana is literally translated as "fuel" or "seeds". It is a mental event that follows the clenching of Tanha. It can be thought of as the opposite of Equanimity. Instead of keeping your eyes on the road you just HAVE to see the traffic accident.

It's also like fiddling or micro-managing things that are better left alone. We just "have" to make some adjustments so that things are "perfect."

Sankhara is like a "construct". If Upadana is a seed, then Sankharas are the warped houses built out of the twisted lumber that grows. It is a collection of mental events built into a story about how the world works.

E.g. thinking about the world through the lens of Victims and Oppressors. This specific sankhara is called the "Hell Realm" is buddhism b/c it reinterprets signs of how to get out as tricks and attacks.

"It is said that the most tragic aspect of the hell realm is that none of the gates are barred."

So put everything together and you get: The mind has ideals which creates nihilism the more we realize our ideals can never be. We come up w/ complex schemes to manifest our ideals but they don't work so we try even harder.

If we do the opposite and push less hard, we realize that we've been stuck in a vicious cycle of confusion. Instead of trying to buy and decorate the perfect house we start tearing it down. We realize the idea that we needed a perfect house was just one of the confusions.