Like you I do not consider surprising the fact that Buddha took over conceptions from Brahmins and Jains. Just as little that Buddhism incorporated a lot of local traditions on its route through South Asia. - Referring to gift-wrapping I imagine Milinda saying: Would you please unwrap your gift, Nagasena, and present the content in its pure form :-) Please give me one answer not 80.000.

- I have the impression that we agree to a large extent about the importance of the memory for our present state of mind. - In order to confirm or to reject your hypothesis that the human unconscious depends on merits from a past live, how do you test your hypothesis? - Chris, I would like to return to Milindas 4 questions. Do you agree?

> Would you please unwrap your gift, Nagasena, and present the content in its pure form :-) Please give me one answer not 80.000.

The doctors of a country might prescribe 80,000 different cures; because different patients have different needs. "I have no illness but give me a cure in its pure form" doesn't make sense. I suspect that illness is caused by wrong view (of self etc.) but I am not a doctor. Perhaps a "pure" (formless?) message would only make sense in a pure land to a pure audience: e.g. (to pick one speculation) a compassion-only message, to beings free of delusions about form and about self.

I say that without wanting to detract from the Buddha's doctrine of the eight-fold way.

> your hypothesis that the human unconscious depends on merits from a past life

I was thinking of merits from a current life. For example, this article is a description of effects of meditation.

Of course, any strong feedback in our current(!) life affects our unconsciuosness. A striking example is your above case of traumatization. I know from neuroscience that meditation has effects on the brain activity, which can be measured and localized. But up to now, that does not shed any light on the question whether meditation leads to insight about the outside world, the way how things "really" are. What one person considers a deep insight, the other may call an illusion.

You suspect that illness is caused by wrong views. I would turn the conclusion around: Some mental illness or psychic disorder produces wrong views. Psychosis is the most severe illness of this kind.

@jowehler Meditative 'insight about the outside world' may be not-the-point. Last night I reread the pages of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance which include "Aristotle fouled up what Phædrus wanted to say by placing rhetoric in an outrageously minor category in his hierarchic order of things", so I'm thinking, Buddhism isn't a branch (subset) of science-about-the-outside-world: instead, science is a branch of Right Living.

So, more to the point, the above Dhammapada reference suggests "immunity to poison"; the CBC reference suggests "unconditioned happiness"; etc. But the Buddha's doctrine does suggest Right View as the "forerunner" of the eight-fold path.

@jowehler I do agree (though the 'cause' of psychosis is unclear, and in general Buddhism teaches interdependent causation rather than simple cause-and-effect). But when I suggested "80,000 doors to the dharma" are "different cures", I meant that as an analogy (like the 'parable of the arrow' is an analogy): SFAIK dharma is meant to alleviate "suffering" or "dis-ease" -- that kind of "illness".

I wasn't trying to say that "wrong view causes illness": I was trying to say that it's IMO evident that "wrong view leads to suffering". Also though we may be glad that we are not psychiatrically ill (e.g. psychotic), nevertheless we may may have some (other) "wrong view" about self, and thus be vulnerable to suffering, and not enlightened. Even ignoring (or without understanding) kamma and rebirth, Buddhism may be truthful and prescriptive: helpful.