The Four Noble Truths demythologised

This is quite interesting, especially if (like me) you are find some of the Buddhist analysis of the human condition helpful to some degree. It arises from a recently publish book Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist and you can find a bit of a reflection on it here:

the church and postmodern culture: conversation: Speculative Grace: The Four Noble Truths. It is the following that caught my attention: "Batchelor’s thesis is that the four noble truths – originally anti-mythological, pragmatic, and phenomenological – were almost immediately re-embedded by the Buddha’s followers into the more familiar and comfortable mythological framework of Hinduism in a way that conceals the straightforward but radical logic of the original formulation."

Now, I want to do with this something a bit different to what Adam Miller does in his post: I would want to link this up with a Christian reading which might argue that the cessation of craving is a fool's errand.

What we need to do is to recognise that 'craving' or 'desire' is what, for good and ill, drives humans. That desire can be well-oriented or otherwise, it can be well-carried out (right mindfulness etc) or not. What we might then do is to recognise that unright /misdirected desire/craving is righted not by elimination of all desire (which is to become inhuman) but rather to redirect desire. Principally this redirection of the affections is the fixing of primary desire on God (see Mt.6:33) and is held in place and grown by the ongoing work of 'sanctification' - aided chiefly by the classic disciplines of the Christian life and the re-orientation of our perspectives by Scripture, meditation and prayer (including recognition of wrongness and misdirection and repentance).

One of the important insights of Christian thinking is that this is not something we can achieve solo... there is a gracious intervention from outside of our condition possible to kick-start the process and to offer ongoing support ....