Can Buddhism end all suffering?

A Buddhist friend is conducting a survey in a secular Buddhist group. The survey asks this very interesting question: Do you believe that there is a way to completely end all suffering, indefinitely? In Buddhism, it is taught that the Noble Eightfold Path is a path that leads to the ending of all suffering. That sounds perhaps too good to be true, even to some Buddhists. How is it possible to end all suffering? Isn’t this an exaggeration?

We should note that the original term Buddha used is “dukkha.” Dukkha is a Pali word that is pregnant with meaning. Unfortunately, it is basically an untranslatable word. In some Western Buddhist books, it is translated as “suffering.” I have also seen it translated as “unsatisfactoriness” and “stress.” Aside from the meanings of “suffering,” “unsatisfactoriness” and “stress,” it is notable that dukkha is also associated with existence itself. This suggests that all existence has the property of dukkha. In the chapter dedicated to the discussion of the First Noble Truth, Walpola Rahula, author of the classic Buddhist text, What the Buddha Taught, had this to say about dukkha:

What we call a ‘being’, or an ‘individual’, or ‘I’, according to Buddhist philosophy, is only a combination of ever-changing physical and mental forces or energies, which may be divided into five groups or aggregates (pañcakkhandha). The Buddha says: ‘In…