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There can
be little doubt that the Sakya Buddha’s great Liberating Insights (i.e. his
fundamental ≈
universal ≈ complete ≈ perfect problem
solution) were (was) adapted (indeed, pinched, as so many innovations are)
from standard Indian medical best practice and which was 2nd to none (hence @ mukti
in the Brahman) in the ancient world and now evolving to become the very
best again. In ancient India, best medical (including mental health care)
practice consisted of applying a template of 4 basic responses to a patient
presenting with a illness, namely determining that:
Ancient Indian Medicine
The
basic (hence universal) principle
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1.
There is an illness.
2.
That’s the cause.
3.
There is a cure for this illness.
4.
These are the means of curing this illness.
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Note the progression (and which can be expanded) from specific,
hence relative (and experienced as incomplete, imperfect and so on) to
abstract, hence universal (suggesting absolute, and experienced as
complete, perfect and so on), in other words, from an individual and actual
event to a universal and virtual principle. A Buddha is so-called because
he generates (or finds) a universal principle.
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The Sakya Bodhisattva
Actual application
Old Buddhism
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The
Sakya Buddha
The (more) basic (universal) principle
Old Buddhism
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The
Buddha of Buddhas
The Mitreya*
The most abstracted,
hence universal ≈ absolute principle
New
Buddhism
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1. There is suffering
2. These are its causes
3. There is an end to
suffering
4. These are the means
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1. There
is arising
2. These
are its cause
3. There is cessation
4. These are the means to
cessation
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1. There is a problem
2. These are its causes
3. There is an end to the
problem
4. Creating** a solution
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* So named because universally (user-) friendly.
* If ‘finding’ is
substituted for ‘creating’, then the Pali metaphor ‘sammasambodhi’ is
perfectly matched by the Greek/English metaphor ‘Eureka’.
What the
possibly bi-polar (and very distressed) Sakya Buddha simply did was apply
the principles of Indian Medical Best Practice to his personal problem.
Indeed, that’s what everyone does to solve a problem that discomforts.
However, he then generalised his solution to the whole-world-(i.e.
life-)-as-‘ill’ (or sinful) and needing a cure (salvation).* Then he
deduced – as every basic scientist does – a universal (hence perfect,
because complete, thus absolute) formula (or principle) for the universal
‘arising and ceasing’, and, in addition, a universal formula for the
‘arising and ceasing of ‘ill’’ (i.e. sorrow, suffering and so on) and, eureka (i.e. sammasambodhi
≈ complete, hence perfect
awakening) a universal salvation formula (or principle) and its local
application, a religion/means of salvation, arose.
* All of the Great
Religions arrived at this proposition and that’s their raison d’être.
St Paul adapted this view from the flaky story of the 'fall’
and, possibly, from interacting with Buddhists or Jains during a visit to
Persia after his Damascus fiasco. St Augustine revamped St
Paul's personal notion of universal sinfulness, i.e. ill, as his even flakier
fantasy of Original Sin.
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