17. Two Sūtras on Healing and Healers from the Chinese Canon
The two shortsūtrasbelow depict the Buddha as a “Supreme Physician” and relate the Four Noble Truths to four medical skills as defined in traditional Indian medicine.¹ A recurring metaphor in them is that through his teaching, the Buddha ends suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), just as a physician pulls out a poisoned arrow.² The firstsūtratranslated below survives in two Chinese versions. Together, these two texts are somewhat mysterious. They are found in two Chinese collections of earlysūtrasthat were translated around 400 C.E.: theGrouped Āgama Sūtras³ and the shorterAlternate Translation of the Grouped Āgama
Chapter, 2017