🍀 The Fourfold Task

The four observations on Buddha's first teachings are commonly stated in today's language as something along the lines of:

  1. Existence is suffering
  2. The origin of suffering is craving
  3. The ceasing of suffering is the ceasing of craving
  4. The way to cease craving is the Buddha's path

These realizations evoke the Bodhisattva vows, translated to modern terms as something that resembles these contradictory promises:

  1. Creations are numberless, we vow to free them
  2. Delusions are inexhaustible, we vow to transform them
  3. Reality is boundless, we vow to perceive it
  4. The awakened way is unsurpassable, we vow to embody it

The four truths and vows can also be framed using the lenses of secularism1,2 as:

  1. Suffering is to be fully known
  2. What arises is to be let go of
  3. The ceasing is to be beheld
  4. The way is to be cultivated

In my own practice I have decided to realign the realization and vows as:

Feel, lose, note, sing.

Differently from teachings where the Bodhisattva vows arise from the realization of the four truths plus the compassion for other sentient beings (therefore the vows are a consequence of the enlightenment), my practice of these vows is the most pragmatic way to work on the fourfold task. That is, the vows are not a consequence but an implementation.

  1. To free all beings, comprehend all suffering through empathy
  2. To deconstruct all illusions, abdicate compulsion through detachment
  3. To perceive reality, see past the veil of wants through attention
  4. To embody the path, cultivate the noble truths through practice