Why are Buddhist concepts so difficult? Why are Buddhist concepts so challenging for people to understand? What do people who  understand know that  average people don't know? What are some of the barriers to the understanding of Dharma? What facilitates understanding of Dharma?
They both "are" and "are not" difficult to understand?

For example I just told my mum what the four or five precept are, starting with "no killing" -- because when we met in the morning we agreed that it had been a full moon overnight, and I mentioned it's a Buddhist holiday world-wide on full moon days, and she asked how Buddhist celebrate -- so I explained the five and the eight precepts, that monks have 227 rules, that lay people practice 5 all the time, and practice 8 on holy days, to be like monks -- some lay people practice the 8 all the time, many practice just on holy days (like, Christians go to church on Sundays, while Christian priests go to church every day).

She said she wouldn't be able to remember 227 rules -- I told her that people are trained, before and after ordination! -- and that for lay people, there are only 5.

The 5 are easy to remember! "No killing", "no lying", "no sexual misconduct", etc. I think those are easy to understand, someone will do that anyway even without being Buddhist.

And after that: generosity, kindness, reserve, maybe prudence, good social behaviour. Not rocket science, amirite?

And then the noble truths and so on.

I find two or three big difficulties. Two are linguistic:


Some people or texts use words like "mindfulness" without explaining them, like I'm supposed to know already what they're talking about, but perhaps the word means something different to each person. Normally when you learn a word like "cat" or "dog" it might be with reference to an example (of a cat or dog) -- demonstrating "mindfulness" isn't so easy, it's a bit intangible/abstract or requiring definition, and/or examples.
My mum at least won't put up with Pali. Couldn't you explain it in English? :-) Not that she's never learned another language, but it isn't easy (to do so) and why should she.


The third of course are the real difficulties, i.e. what you might call Mara or something ...



... which I'd also know as: ignorance, foolishness, lack of discipline, bad habits, rationalisation ('voice of temptation'), and what not -- projection, identification -- denial -- and what might be understood as logical mistakes such false dilemmas, faulty generalisation. Also lack of energy, lack of joy, and so on ...

... these (like "the seven factors of enlightenment" and so on) are, kind of, the diagnoses or prescriptions of the Buddhist teaching. I guess they're "difficult" in the same way as it's "difficult" to be doctor! Different beings, seemingly with different problems ... and the general advice doesn't always work for them, and "concepts" can be difficult to convey (perhaps especially at moments when people think they have real problems).

We're not all trying to be full-time doctors though, maybe, so, perhaps it's not that difficult?

Or maybe it doesn't seem as difficult as it used to, when you're relatively well, "not so bad".

I'm a bit mindful of this advice I got from MatthewMartin, the last time I asked about this topic -- How to explain what Buddhism is? -- one bit of it was,


  If someone really has no problems, that's great, they are Enlightened! The historical Buddha (According to Stephen Batchelor's retelling) said as much on his death bed, when he asked if anyone had any questions left, no one did, so he said, well you all must be enlightened then. People need Buddhism when their current raft has sunk. If there is food on the table, a comfortable place to sleep, and they have no complaints about their daily routine, then our jobs as Buddhists is to rejoice in their success (mudita).


You may or may not agree, I think it helps me to reconcile the difficult Buddhist concepts with the daily life of people who aren't overtly Buddhist.