Did the Sakya Buddha get it?
Not really, judging by
today’s state of knowledge about the world. To be sure,
he recognised that behavioural misadventure, like desire hatred and
stupidity, even desire alone, could cause problems, and which are duly
punished, consequently triggering suffering. But his main contention, namely
that all things (dharmas ≈
effects) are transient and, because effects, without abiding substance (to
wit: anatta, i.e. sunja), did not answer the question of the true origin of suffering. Of course he
did begin by asking the right question, but asked only one and not two! He
then declared himself satisfied (perfectly fulfilled) with the answer, though
he must have known that it was incomplete, hence uncertain. His whole answer
was in fact a (very plausible, and generally acceptable) half truth. Soon
after his death, his followers recognised the shortcomings of his perfect
(for him), therefore universal solution, and for the next 1000 years they
attempted to upgrade it. But, since no new Buddha emerged, they obviously
failed. Indeed, Buddhism disappeared completely from India, most thanks to
idiot savants like Nagarjuna and Vasubandhu. The Buddha
put his single question to a failing, i.e. ill human, namely himself. He
should have asked himself the two parts of the whole question, and when he
wasn’t quite so depressed. And the
question is: “When do I feel bad and when do I feel good!” And the
answer is: “I feel bad when I fail to complete a
task. I feel good when a succeed at completing
a task.” In other
words, feeling good signals failure. Feeling good signals success. And what is
the task? Any task
will do! After all, it’s an open universe. Rewarding attainment, i.e.
function completion irrespective of content gives every living creature an
equal chance to live the good life. It is attainment (i.e. completion,
fulfilment) that is rewarded and non-attainment (i.e. incompletion and
non-fulfilment) is punished. An
orgasm pays off for transmission (i.e. task accomplishment), not for
fertilization! Good (≈ high, or high energy) and
bad (≈ depressed, or low energy) feelings are a living
system’s (i.e. logic machine’s) Guide & Control System. Next
question: If there are a zillion tasks, and each one when completed is
rewarded with a good feeling (and so on…), obviously the zillion tasks are
applications (or fractals) of a basic program (or algorithm). And what is
that basic program (or algorithm?): transform uncertainty into certainty,
disorder into order, difference into sameness, incompleteness into
completeness, and so on. In short, a living beings
job is to feed on randomness (i.e.
on random quanta) and create order (i.e. higher
order random quanta). The Old
Buddha’s gripe had been that suffering results from the fact that all things
(actually effects) have neither permanence nor substance (i.e. 1st
cause, hence realness status: this was an ancient Indian misconception). One
suffered because one attached to that which didn’t last and one didn’t own,
therefore couldn’t possibly be real (or?). Actually
it’s the task of all living beings (as logic machines) to create real order,
i.e. identifiable substance. And they do it be feeding on (or inputting)
uncertainty, randomness, incompleteness, timelessness, formlessness, in a
word, they feed on random quanta, thereby
producing/excreting/outputting certainty, order, completeness, time and form
(i.e. identity), in a word, perfectly ordered (@ minimum entropy, hence
enstatic) quanta. In short, a living being quantizes (hence decides, and
orders) random events. It is fully
(self-) rewarded for completing that task perfectly. And it is (self-)
punished for failing to complete that task. The actual content of its task
and the shape of the finished product are of no importance. That’s because
the universe is an open system. Attainment, i.e. completion (i.e.
quantization) is everything. And it all works because the ‘ground’ of
creation is a random quantum condensate. Was the
Sakya Buddha a true, fully awakened Buddha, a sammasambodha? Yes he was! …
because he attained a perfect solution (albeit relative to his time and
conditions). Will the
next Buddha be a true, fully awakened Buddha, a sammasambodha? Yes he will!
For he too will attain a perfect solution (albeit relative to his time and conditions). And so on
and on ad infinitum.
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