Selected quotes from “On the Four Ennobling Tasks instead of the Four Noble Truths”, my notes on and excerpts from Stephen Batchelor’s talk “Truth and Violence” composed by Franz Manfredi.
“Now when you actually read the text itself, the Buddha’s first sermon, if you reflect upon it, you find it concludes that-
dukkha (suffering)
samudaya (origin of suffering)
nirodha (cessation of suffering)
magga (the path of cessation) are tasks to be recognized, to be performed, and to be accomplished. So, rather than Four Noble Truths, we have Four Noble Tasks. And that makes all the difference.”
Dukkha - Suffering is to be embraced, understood.
Samudaya - When suffering is embraced and understood, we find it is caused by caused by habitual, compulsive reactivity - the reflexive clinging, aversion, and confusion that blocks wisdom and clear insight.
Nirodha - Reactivity is the cause of suffering and can be let go of.
Magga - This is how reactivity can be let go of in every facet of your precious life (8 fold path).
“This then becomes the project of enlightenment. When craving and aversion (reactivity) arises, grasping, fear, attachment, when these things arise, the task is somehow to let that go.
When you experience moments in which that movement of attachment and grasping and so forth has come to a stop, when you experience the stopping of grasping within your own heart and mind, that freedom is to be experienced fully.
And when the path, this way of life, begins to open up that is not premised on craving or attachment or fear or wanting, then that path is to be cultivated.
That’s the task that is suggested by the Buddha.
Every situation gives us the opportunity to embrace it with clarity, with understanding, to let go of our habitual reactivity, our dogmatic beliefs, our desires, our fears, to open up to a still, quiet, transparent space in which we somehow come to rest, even for a moment, and from that space, which is not conditioned by grasping, we can respond. We can say something, do something that comes from the depths of ourselves rather than from our habitual beliefs and opinions and our ego, basically. And that, I feel, captures the essential movement of the Dhamma. Again, we see here the contrast between a truth and believing in it as something essentially static, as opposed to a task, which is a constant embrace and response—an embrace of and a response to the condition of life as it presents itself to us right now. Whether that’s going on within us, whether it’s in a social environment, whether it’s in a political environment, this offers us a framework or a template for living.”