The question which the Sakya Buddha

never asked

The questions which the archaic Sakya Buddha asked were: “What is the cause and what is the ending of dukkha” whereby dukkha can be variously translated to mean: unpleasantness, sorrow, suffering, unsatisfactoriness and so on.

The question the archaic Sakya Buddha didn’t ask, but which later Buddhists¹ and the modern Buddha, Maitreya, asks is: “What purpose (or function) does dukka (= negative affect) serve?”

The naïve answers given by the archaic Sakya Buddha were: “Dukkha is caused by craving (hence attachment)! Dukkha ends by not craving (hence via detachment)!” This opinion was flawed, because selective.

The awakened understanding about dukkha given by the modern Buddha, Maitreya, is: “Dukkha (= suffering; sorrow etc.,.) operates as one sub-function of a bio-logical system’s Guide & Control Function,³ the other sub-operation being sukkha (= pleasantness; happiness etc.,.)!”

Dukkha is an essential human resource in that it compels a change of performance (and with it behaviour).² Were dukkha not a vital self-regulation means, evolution would have eliminated it long ago. Indeed, though the Sakya’s Buddha original suffering elimination dharma died out in India round about the 11^th century AD, dukkha itself is very much alive and well.

The modern, in-formation savvy Buddha states:

Dukkha indicates performance failure

The archaic Sakya Buddha: Dukkha ends when craving (hence attachment) ends.

The modern Maitreya Buddha: Dukkha ends when failure (to perform @best²) ends.

1 … See the 4^th part of the 4 Noble Truths schedule

2 … Viz. “Suffering is a great teacher!”; “No pain, no gain!”

3 … Understand Guide & Control to mean: self-regulation.

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