Gotama, the man we call the Buddha, lived in the northeast of what is now India roughly between 480BCE and 400BCE. In his first teaching, he presented his listeners with ‘a middle way’ that avoided the religious dead ends of his time – mortification and indulgence. This path is based on his understanding of why human beings experience suffering and how we can stop suffering: what traditional Buddhists call the Four Noble Truths.
The Four Noble Truths in traditional Buddhism are: 1) Life inevitably involves suffering; 2) Suffering is caused by craving; 3) We can be free of suffering if we stop craving; and 4) There is a way of thinking, acting, and meditating that leads to complete liberation from suffering.
Based on his analysis of the relevant Pali texts and the line of interpretation developed by the English-born Buddhist monk Ñāṇavīra Thera in the 1960s, Stephen Batchelor has reinterpreted The Four Noble Truths as a fourfold task. For Stephen, Gotama’s teachings about dukkha are not truths to be believed, but injunctions to transform our lives and promote human flourishing in this world.
A fourfold task
Stephen has created a pithy summary of these tasks – ELSA: Embrace life, Let reactivity be, See reactivity stop, and Actualize a path.
To tread this middle way, we need to practice these four seriously important tasks, and they are to:
- Embrace life – acknowledge and deeply understand and embrace the human condition, especially its inevitable difficulties
- Let reactivity be – the clutching and fantasising that these difficulties usually stimulate in us
- See reactivity stop – experience the profound peace of mind that comes from this letting go, and
- Actualize a path – respond, say, see, set a direction in our lives, cultivate a path – ‘the eightfold path’ – in which we work on eight aspects of our lives:
- Complete vision – our understanding of our life process
- Complete intention – our intentions
- Complete speech – our communication with others
- Complete action – our ethically significant actions
- Complete livelihood – our approach to work
- Complete effort – the effort we put into our spiritual development
- Complete mindfulness – our presence of mind, and
- Complete collectedness – our mental integration.
Seriously tackling these four tasks (or fourfold task) – which is best understood as a positive feedback loop rather than a linear progression – leads to a process of awakening, of realising our full human potential to live intelligently, compassionately and hopefully with wisdom. Alone, or with others, we can experience the deepest fulfilment that we humans are capable of experiencing.
In this talk, Stephen Batchelor examines and sketches these four tasks.
To learn more about the fourfold task, listen to these two talks by Stephen Batchelor:
A fourfold task, part 1
https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/169/talk/24379
A fourfold task, part 2
7 Replies to “The core concept of secular Buddhism: a fourfold task”
I was just listening to Stephen through a live interview with Tricycle and I was searching for clarity of the 4 noble paths/tasks and the 8 fold path. Your site was wonderful to find. Thanks. brad
Thank you very much Brad, very glad it is of interest.
I find the ELSA approach to be brilliant, relatable, joyous and energizing for me. I have explored many lineages and traditions, but this lands with me most soundly, clearly and enthusiastically. Thank you very much Mr Batchelor for your insight and deep care of moving the Dharma forward.
I regret that Stephen Batchelor’s talk does not support the application of subtitles or simultaneous translation into other languages, in my particular case, into Spanish.
Original in Spanish: Lamento que la charla de Stephen Batchelor no admite aplicación de subtítulos ni traducción simultánea a otros idiomas, en mi caso particular, al espeñol.
I regret that Stephen Batchelor’s talk does not support the application of subtitles or simultaneous translation into other languages, in my particular case, into Spanish.
Original in Spanish: Lamento que la charla de Stephen Batchelor no admite aplicación de subtítulos ni traducción simultánea a otros idiomas, en mi caso particular, al espeñol.
Very helpful, thank you very much.
Stephen, thank you very much for this talk. I followed the logic of your arguments, appreciating them aesthetically as well as logically (for me the two go together), right up to the point where you say: “Fully knowing suffering is to embrace life – to say ‘yes’ to life.” I do not see how you arrive at this from the Buddha’s statement that “Suffering is to be fully known,” which is neutral in tone, whereas your derived statement is not. You seem to be equating the all-round/embracing [adj.] KNOWING ABOUT SUFFERING – in the sense of being open-eyed about suffering in all its aspects and facing it squarely – with fully EMBRACING [verb] ONE’S LIFE – in the sense of saying an unconditional “yes” to life as a whole, including whatever suffering one experiences.
(Given the inherent unity of all things, one cannot say a comprehensive “yes” to one’s own life without saying the same with regard to all lives and existence in general. But how can one say “yes” to the terrible suffering that millions, including children, undergo, not to mention animals?)
Are not the above statements, the Buddha’s and yours, in fact two very different responses, having different consequences? Does not practically working to reduce suffering and harm necessitate us NOT being accepting of everything being as it is, whereas such activity IS aided by clear-sightedness? I appreciate that this clear-sightedness is the outcome of a quietened and uncluttered mind but, whilst letting go of a “why me?” attitude to pain or misfortune might well be conducive to such a mind, I do not see how saying an all-embracing “yes” to life, warts and all (or rather, fulminating tumours and all) is helpful in this regard. – But I am relatively new to all this, so perhaps there is something I am just not getting yet!