According to MMY, the Buddha is the ninth incarnation of the Sun God, Vishnu, based on the Bhagavata Purana.
MMY has been very supportive of the Buddha, and apparently, judging from what he has written and said, Buddha, is held by MMY in very high esteem. And no wonder, seeing as how the historical Buddha, that is, Shakya the Muni, called Gotama, is the inspiration for the entire enlightenment tradition in India. Not for nothing did the Adi Shankara take up an ochre robe fashioned from rags. Go figure. Recorded history in India begins with the so-called Buddhist Canon, which was compiled one hundred years after the demise of the Master. This corpus of texts is the foundation for all subsequent Asian philosophy, to wit: 1. The enlightenment tradition - yoga. 2. The order of sramanas - adeptship. 3. The eight limbs of yoga - the eight-fold path. 4. Universal compassion, non-violence - ahimsa. 5. The Chain of Dependent Causation - moral reciprocity. 6. Zero tolerance for social hierarchy - egalitarianism. 7. Individual conservation of energy - nirvana. 8. Knowledge of relative reality - samsara.
