Stephen Batchelor: The Four Noble Tasks (ELSA)

Stephen Batchelor: The Four Noble Tasks

Based on the article: Stephen Batchelor: The Four Noble Tasks

The ELSA Acronym

Stephen Batchelor proposes a shift from seeing the Four Noble Truths as dogmatic beliefs to seeing them as Four Tasks, captured by the acronym ELSA:

• E: Embrace dukkha
• L: Let Go of grasping
• S: Stop grasping
• A: Act

The Framework for Living

Stephen Batchelor

So you have, in other words, Four Tasks, and we don’t have time this evening, but each of these tasks, I feel, leads to the next one. They’re all interlinked. And, although this is slightly tongue-in-check, I think they can be reduced to the acronym ELSA, E.-L.-S.-A., ELSA: Embrace dukkha, Let Go of grasping, Stop grasping, and Act. Do something, in other words: think, speak, physically act; get on with your work. If we think of the Four [Noble Truths] in this way, we have a framework for living in this world, here and now.

ELSA can operate in any moment of our life. 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.