Buddhist Expansion 1 and 2 - Extra History Reaction 

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My mom is catholic and father is Buddhist , both Buddhism and Christianity is very dear to me just like my parents.

This is certainly something I'd love to see your reaction to! As my profile picture suggests, Buddhism is something I hold dear to my heart. Let's see how the series proceeds! All the best ❤

As for why the Siddhartha was so surprised at seeing the suffering & the death(a normal prince would have already seen it even in the palace). Siddhartha's father wanted him to be king(the prophecy said he would either be king or a monk) so his father showered him with the luxury of a king: The palace is filled with nothing but young, healthy, pretty people. And if any of them got sick/old/...., that person would be replaced by another pretty person

You're watching the animated series Avatar?!?! NICE!!! One of THE BEST cartoons of my childhood! BTW, The thing that got me learning more into Buddhism is a Simpsons episode where Lisa converts to Buddhism

The existence of non-religious figures are questioned as much, but more myth tends to develop around religious figures because the power of religion tends to prompt a significant number of people to manipulate that power and apply an interpretation of that religious figure to their own ends, so there is more to question about religious figures when talking about them in an historic sense.

Sam Nixon with another video on Indian History! 👍

The real VTH heads love the Extra History reactions! Even though these don’t get the bigger views, these are always by far my favorite reactions.

Fun fact: Angulimala literally means "garland of fingers".

I’m so glad you’re reacting to this series, I love watching you cover Asian history especially religious history because it contextualizes so much in one package because it’s culture, archeology, and science all mixed together in how different peoples developed. I’d love to see you react to a channel called ReligionForBreakfast. He talks about a wide range of religious topics but he contextualizes and analyses it for informational/historical purposes and I find his videos incredibly well researched and educational.

Thank you for being a great example of a nice, moral normal Christian. Too often we only hear the loudest people.

As a Buddhist, I am excited to see you react to this

Overly Sarcastic Productions has a trilogy on India and another on China, just throwing those out as possible future series.

I love watching your reaction videos on stuff I’ve already watched! The added context is wonderful

Love your content, a Buddhist from Sri lanka ❤🇱🇰

I'm an atheist. I fully accept that Buddha existed. Same goes for Jesus, Mohammed, etc. How much of Siddhartha's story is true? Hell if I know.

Shout out to VTH for going outside your area of expertise. We all need that. here’s hoping you can do some other stuff like this in the future

Looks like another great video!

in our relagion you don't need to change(i mean if you are different relagion) your relagion for marry.If you marry a man(or)woman from buddhist relagion he(or)she have no right to forcefully change your religion,you can still worship your own relagion(every relagion) -sorry for my bad english✌

Appreciate you VtH! I tried to make Vicksburg work so hard with my sched but to no avail. Thank you being awesome!

One of the best quotes I've heard is that historians forget that records were written by humans.

11:53 There are statues of the 'Emaciated Buddha'. Pretty rare, usually small. * Another rarely mentioned or shown in the west is the 'Reclining Buddha' there is quite a few of these large statues. It represents Buddha on his last death bed. Khatakan Taung, Myanmar and Wat Pho, Thailand both have notable examples.

Thank you for a video on my religion. I love how widespread the topics of your channel are.

Glad to hear you like the animated Avatar show, it’s wild how a kids show covers adult topics like how war affects individuals and communities differently so well.

15:24 When you mention the sith, it reminds me of a very well done video about the philosophy of Kreia. A character that's incredibly well written, and she mentions desire as well. How the Sith brcome trapped by their lust for more and more power, and in the end have the ability to change so much. But change nothing, having long forgetten their reasons for seeking that power in the first place.

Hey Carter County, KY represent! That's wild your family is also from there.

There's an excellent video about the Vedas by Schwerpunkt who explains the birth of Buddhism in that key. Strongly recommended

4:20 This is actually true of most Dharmic & Eastern "traditions". The hard structures of 'religion' only really apply to the Abrahamic faiths.

Cogito has also made three videos on the ancient Indic faiths, namely, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. You can check them out if you're personally interested to see the parallels among the three. Also a fun fact: the Buddha is also considered as the ninth avatar (incarnation) of the Hindu god Vishnu, who is considered as the preserver of the universe.

Since you did so much comparison between Buddhism and Christianity, as I figured and hoped you would, I noticed something that could be a comparison also. The conversion of the finger-snatching psycho killer in the beginning could be likened to the conversion Paul. Before Paul's conversion he was Saul, basically an executioner who watched people getting stoned to death. Since I was raised a Protestant I was aware of stoning as a child but it wasn't until adulthood until I really understood how incredibly gruesome and barbaric stoning actually is. If you ask me, even if it's sanctioned as punishment, the act of carrying it out borders on the psychotic! But when Saul saw that the Christian's faith could not be taken away through torture, he repented and converted. Well that's just my take. Thanks so much for this! I find Buddhism and all religions interesting. Great job!

love your videos ❤

Love your content 😊😊

It is very interesting how many victims of atrocities (and their family members) will frequently communicate with perpetrators. Even befriend them. Like members of a murder victim's family visiting the murderer in prison where they all talk about life, what happened, or even something as mundane as political news. It doesn't ALWAYS happen obviously but it can and does. It's fascinating to me.

I would like to think that due to the Hellenistic Empires such as the Seleucid's having contact the Mauryan Empire and the Mauyran Empire Ashoka being a Buddhist and sending monks to convert in the lands of Antiochus, Ptolemy II, and Magas on the Ashoka inscription if Buddhism may have had an influence on the development of Proto-Christianity.

love your content

Its one thing to acknowledge that oral histories are subject to change. But its another to pick and choose which parts of the story must be taken literally and then to enact public law based on the literal interpretation.

Happiness is fleeting but so is suffering.

3:52 I'm a black belt in karate and sometimes at the end of class we would meditate to focus on one thought. 15:13 The full quote from Yoda is "Fear is the path to the dark side, dear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate to suffering."

This is looking like a fun reaction series! The parallels you show are interesting, but I think they're also just a testament to what roles "revealed" religions can sociologically play: they're social reform movements. Would you eventually be interested in reacting to EpicHistory TV's episode on the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate? It's really well done.

On the subject of oral history there's a reason a lot of times it oral histories were put to song, in poetic verse, or otherwise in a highly specialized structure. Not only does it make it easier to remember, but it also makes it easier to identify changes. This (and other reasons) leads to the Poetic Edda (mostly written down after the Prose Edda) being considered more accurate than the Prose Edda, because you can tell when something doesn't fit more easily. It's not perfect (there are parts of the Poetic Edda that get questioned if it's a skillful change or not), but it did help make it harder for telephone style changes to happen.

4:10 You chose wisely. The animated series actually has more faith in the viewer's ability to understand the plot, characters and philosophies than the life-action version that claims to be aimed at adults.

The queen's dream of the six-tusk elephant reminded me of the 14 cow dream that Pharoh had from the Bible.

Re: child mortality. Just walk through an old cemetery. It can be absolutely heartbreaking.

The statue we associate with Buddha in the west isn't Buddha, it's a depiction of Hotai, a spirit of good fortune.

The extreme evildoer who gets redeemed and becomes a great paragon of the faith seems to be a common theme among the origin stories of religions. Buddhism has Angulimala, Christianity has Saul of Tarsus, Islam has Omar ibn al-Khattab. Any others?

To answer your question about the Buddhas supposed burial place, some of the stupas that allegedly contain the Buddha can be found in Sarnath, India.

So cool you’re finally seeing ATLA! I didn’t see ATLA until I was 38 years old. Excited to see what you think of it as someone seeing for the first time in their 40s. 👍🌋

15:22 so I had to time stamp the comment about Star Wars because the line about such leads to such leads to the dark side is taken in part from the “12 link chain of causation” and is really fascinating stuff.

I'm reminded of Paul the Apostle. I had always thought you're only responsible for the stones you throw, but if you held the coats you were responsible for all thrown.

Avatar the Last Airbender is AWESOME

Hi Chris. Can I just say as an atheist I'm very glad you brought up the historical existence of religious figures. Unfortunately among atheist communities we've had the rise of Jesus mythicism which I understand the appeal of to an atheist. After all if there was no historical Jesus then there's an argument for Christianity being untrue which would be very emotionally appealing to a lot of atheists. But I say the word 'unfortunately' as from what I can tell Jesus mythicism is built on a foundation of sand and that the overwhelming majority of scholars don't take it seriously. But I see a lot of atheists that are highly emotionally invested in Jesus mythicism and it really prevents them from looking at or understanding the historical evidence. Mythicism also seems to lean into a lot of unfounded conspiracy theories. I think whether you believe Jesus is divine, performed miracle, and rose from the dead or not I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there was historical figure at the root of Christianity. Especially as there's evidence that leans in that direction. But as I said I think too many of my fellow atheists are too emotionally invested in mythicism.

The biggest factor in whether a religious/mythological figure can be justifiably deemed absolutely a historical person is either a body or corroborating textual evidence (such as Jesus's body being missing but being mentioned in letters to Tiberius or contemporary Persian tablets spreading news of Alexander's victories). That being said, I feel it's incredibly important to remember that - with premodern history especially - that the reality of antiquity is likely nothing like what we know in the sense of how histories tended to be literary in nature rather than an unbiased scholarly record of literal events. We know more about ancient times than ever before, but we still know so little

Angulimala was actually a very good, kind and smart kid. There was a ritual back then where after your tutor teaches you everything he knows, the student has to give the teacher a gift as gratitude. Can't remember the entire story well but the teacher asked angulimala for a necklace with 1000 fingers. That is why angulimala did what he did and became a serial killer. If I remember correctly lol.

Having studied many religions and philosophies myself, I have found that nearly all of them have a great deal in common.

Very important. Good job

It's very fascinating to me how people get into buddhism. Desire leads them to it since they want to achieve nirvana, so it's almost like Buddhism fought fire with fire; Use desire to achieve no desires.

if your interested in the whole similarities of Christianity and buddhism i recommend the works of thomas merton a catholic american monk who was a mystic and wrote bout how buddhism was very compatible with the teachings of the desert fathers. (st paul of thebes and st Anthony the great among others) some interesting works

Just because an oral or very old history gets some details wrong doesn't necessarily make it fiction

6th century BC would have made him roughly contemporary with Confuscius

Buddhism (in particular Zen Buddhism which is a way of life and not a traditional western religion) is very appealing to someone like me. Other religions spend so much energy making rules for "other people" to follow. Buddhism is more personal development (in particular Zen Buddhism).

Also it’s awesome to hear that you are watching avatar the last air bender!! I’d love to hear you talk about real world parallels in the show one day

Several ancient Magadha kings like Bimbisara and Ajatashatru met Buddha and have that image printed on their coins. 2 heterodox religions got originated during 600BC i.e. Jainism and Buddhism and that period coincided with 2nd phase of urbanisation of india. Buddhism was also popular among Indo-Greek kings like Menander who upon interaction with a Buddhist monk got converted into Buddhism, story of milindpanha tells about that. Indo-Greek kings ruled around area of W. India and present day Pakistani and Afghanistan (taliban destroyed huge rock carved images of Bamiyan Buddha). Buddhism had many schools like Mahayana (meaning bigger vehicle - idol worship of Buddha prevalent among upper East Asian countries like china, Japan, S.korea) , Hinayana (meaning lesser vehicle - don’t worship idol of Buddha, prevalent among south and south East Asian countries like S.Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia) . Regarding the question you asked about where are stupas located ? You might wanna see about “Buddhist tourism circuit” it traces the steps of Buddha from his birth till death. Recently relics of Buddha were transported to Thailand from India. There’s a festival called “Buddha Purnima” (Purnima means full moon day) celebrated in Asian countries commemorating birth of prince Siddhartha, India’s PM Modi visited Lumbini( birth place of Buddha) on this day in 2022. You might also be interested in knowing ‘Berenike Buddha’ - a statue of Buddha found in old port city of Egypt (indicating flourishing trade India had with Greek, roman empires)

There is an excellent book on the parallels between Christianity and Buddhism. "Living Buddha Living Christ" by Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. It is a good thing to build bridges between the faiths.

I am happy that you a watching this series. As a Buddhist coming from a Christian (methodist/lutherain) family I saw a lot of the values in Christianity in Buddhism without the strict doctrine that prevented me from truly accepting Christanity's teachings. One of the most important factors to remember for Buddhism is that you do not worship the Buddha he never once talks about being a divine being and that it was up to the individual to live up to the eightfold path's teachings. The Buddha's role much like Jesus was to be a teacher and to try and show people the path forward.

Just today, I learned that Buddhism is also responsible for the dominance of the samurai culture in Japan for over 700 years.

If your interested in Asian History especially in Samurai History i highly recommend the shogunate he goes into Samurai history in Great detail.

Its not a mistake that Buddhist teachings and the teachings of Christ line up so well. Theres theories that Jesus was influenced by the beliefs of Buddhist traders in his youth. He'd absolutely have access to people from all over the East being a builder in the Levant which was at the terminus of the Silk Road at the time. Also the biblical Jesus was very open to debate and new ideas, so it just makes sense to me. Maybe Im wrong but its almost too much of a coincidence.

Great video once again VTH. Have you heard of Montemayor? He makes graphics and commentary mainly based on the Pacific War. I find his content highly informative and I would appreciate if you were able to add a few thoughts to it. Once again, cheers!

you watch the animated avatar series? dude everytime i see your videos there is another reason to like you as a person XD

4:06 That's absolutely awesome man, hope you loved it as much I do, it's definitely one of the shows I will be making my kids watch 😂❤ Curious if you guys kept watching the Legend of Korra as well, I definitely recommend it!

11:35 This is overblown, based on a very myopic outsider understanding of Indian History. While class is valid, what in English is known as caste was actually less of a problem during the period described (500 BC). The ossification of jaati-varna (the two distinct but interacting systems called caste), really only starts a thousand years later. Around 600 AD is when we see structures mutate into the deeply oppressive and socially fracturing systmes they will remain till the 1980s.

I think that you may have the right sense of humor and perspective to enjoy reading Lamb by Christopher Moore

What if Jesus was trained by Asian scholars? The Magi from the East came and paid homage and then traveled to Egypt with him to flee from Herod. There he was taught and trained in Eastern philosophy, medicine and other arts. Thats why when he was presented in the temple, he was well versed in different topics.

Thanks

@9:30 one caveat: it's it a heavier proof when you encounter a trivial reference to a character rather than a special one - for example if you encounter a refference that someone said that "it happend in a second year of Julius Ceasar reign", or that his new taxes, his new laws, his trivial, mundane things. Those are much stronger proofs rather than "someone found excalibur", or that someone walked on water and healed people. A text that saids: "I bought a chair from Joshua that had many followers" would be a much stronger proof than "500 people withness his miracle death". We somehow dismiss the Bibile refference that while Christ died the graves oppened and people rised from death - this would be a much stronger argument for the mirracle.

Interesting video

wondering if there are any plans on reacting about Japanese history around the sengoku period, especially with the release of FX's Shogun that came out recently.

I went to a Buddhist temple one time in El Paso TX and it was a different experience. It wasn't for me. Chanting all day and a vegetarian lunch. I never went back

Denmark mentioned, lets gooooo

20:07 aka Chinese whispers aka Telephone aka purple monkey dishwasher (The Simpsons)

You’re watching avatar? Boy am I jealous. I would do anything to erase my memory just to rewatch that master piece

There was probably a great gestalt in human thought where society moved from small libertarian like clans to merge into "nations" and their populations expanded to heights that libertarian-ism could no longer sustain cohesive societies. New ideas were needed, new ways of binding societies together into a cohesive unit was the priority. All these major religions were probably developed from a merging and morphing of these new ideas. Never underestimate the human mind to overcome existential crises.

Are you gonna break down the new(ish) montemayor video?

I'd like to recommend to you the book, Living Buddha Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Because you emtioned Moses alongside how accurate oral history can be, it needs to be said that scolars belife moses to be completely fictional. Especially because there is no evidence whatsoever that the exodus ever happened in any form. So oral history can very much be faulty

Please talk about Avatar on VTH extra.

The word "conversion" is quite a misnomer when it comes to these Indic traditions.

18:40: WHAT?!!

Angulimala reminds me in a way of Apostle Paul, or Saul before he was redeemed. Came across Jesus, begged for forgiveness and pursued being a student of Christ.

Child mortality rates have always been horribly low until recently. For example, John Wesley was the 15th child of 19 - of which only 9 survived beyond infancy and 3 into adulthood - and that was as recent as the early 18th century (1700s).

Sounds familiar at the start to genesis or the end times.

Avatar is so good! Not just for kids! The best kids stories are just good stories period!

Is the spiky hair making a comeback?

Like the video guys😀

My parents watch the avatar cartoon, Dad loves it

Buddhism sounds like nihilism with a happy mask 😂

I don’t think that the non-religious people believe some people didn’t exist. We just don’t think they performed the fantastical feats written. We are more ready to believe that Jesus existed, than he rose from death. We are ready to believe that Troy existed, than to think Paris killed Achilles with an arrow guided by the god Apollo. We are ready to believe that Vlad the Impaler existed, than to believe he sucked people’s blood… I think you all get the point.

I think while people are quicker to question how historical religious figures are is a product of the nature of how we get the information. When you're questioning something challenging the source is a easy target, and we are less likely to rebel against Alexander the Great then our religious parents. Also if someone like Homer existed is less impactful then Jesus. Also I have always been partial idea that jesus may have interacted with buddists which informed his teachings.

If you think that is wild, look up Manichean. A rival to Christianity but developed from it amd Buddhism as well as Zoroastrianism. It probably came pretty close to being adopted instead of Christianity

It wasn't so long ago 50 was a old man