Comments by "K `" (@user-jt3dw6vv4x) on "UsefulCharts" channel.

@rizkyadiyanto7922 The Myanmar conflict has no connection to Buddhism. There are ethnic minorities like Shan and Karen that face persecution and they're Buddhists too. Not sure why you're even saying this. Just a few weeks ago we saw how Indonesian Muslims were saying hateful things about Rohingyas Muslims, violently storming their shelter in Aceh and saying some of the most hateful things I've ever heard, not even Burmese Tatmadaw had said such things and now suddenly you want to talk about Myanmar and its problems? Stop pretending like you care.
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@rizkyadiyanto7922 They're Bamar and their religion has NOTHING to do with what's happening. Do you even understand what's going on in MYanmar? If it's due to religion, why would Tatmadaw be genociding Shan people who are also Buddhist? It's all due to ethnicity. These groups are ethnically different to Bamar and Tatmadaw believes in Burmanisation. This is why Muslim groups like Kaman and Bamar Muslims are treated with respect because they are culturally very similar to Bamar and the language they speak is Burmese or Arakanese (in the case of Kaman which is related to Burmese). Please do some research on your own neighbourhood. So much support for Palestine and yet so much hate for Rohingyas but pretending to care about what's going on in Myanmar.
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@realtalk6195 Firstly, why did you like your comment minutes after you posted the comment? Secondly, not a single Buddhist monk has actively waged violence against the Rohingyas. If you commit violence as a Buddhist monk, you're de-robed. The very first precept that monks must follow is not to harm any living creatures. Don't conflate pro-Bamar Buddhist nationalist speeches with violence, which is what the Tatmadaw are doing.
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True but Boddhisatvas are also popular in the Theravada countries which all practiced Mahayana before. Popularity of Avalokitesvara, in both male and female forms, happens to transcend all schools of Buddhism as their depiction is seen across Asia.
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That's because it's of the Sanskrit influence, the same word is used in many other South and Southeast Asian languages to mean "religion"
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This is why Sri Lanka isn't progressing because a lot of you think this way. If you don't know, the plantation workers are Tamils of Indian origin brought over during the colonial rule. So of course the majority is going to be Tamil and so what if there was a Muslim girl? The girl is Malay and Malays and Sri Lankan Moors are some of the main minority groups in Sri Lanka. Stop making everything about religion and ethnicity.
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Maybe you should understand that Buddhism, like all other Eastern religions, have been syncretised with local beliefs and Hinduism is a sister religion to Buddhism and one of the main forms of cultural influence on other parts of Asia before the emergence of Buddhism.
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The same thing across Asia, not just Southeast Asia. Buddhism was syncretised with local beliefs and Hinduism. It's very fluid.
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@ikeshkumar9246 Ashoka sent his son to Sri Lanka and Ashoka sent two monks to Myanmar. Mon people of Thailand adopted early forms of Buddhism from India. Later, Shin Uttarajiva of the Pagan kingdom of Myanmar introduced the Theravada school from Sri Lanka into Myanmar and Thai monks travelled to Sri Lanka to be ordained in the Theravada tradition which subsequently spread Theravada to Thailand and other parts of mainland Southeast Asia beyond Myanmar.
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Lol why do some people in Nepal, Myanmar, India and other Asian countries always claim they related to the Buddha?
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It's all Sanskrit influence
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@user-ll6pr5cw1f Sinhalese or broadly speaking Sri Lankan culture/people are not "Desi". "Desi" means Indian (especially North Indian), Pakistani and Bangladeshi. Sri Lanka has nothing to do with that. In terms of cultural connections to other parts of South Asia, Sri Lanka is closest to South India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala).
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@user-ll6pr5cw1f Sinhalese isn't from North India though. It's a Sri Lankan language.
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@user-ll6pr5cw1f Sinhalese is not spoken in India, it's spoken in Sri Lanka and thus a Sri Lankan language. Also, let's not forget the fact that there is a lot of Tamil influence in the language. The language is really a product of its context. The closest Indo-European language to Sinhalese is Dhivehi and they even sound the same. The Indo-European languages of India however sound very different and they don't have the Tamil influence either.
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@user-ll6pr5cw1f How can you say that Sinhalese nationalism is only to do with Buddhism? Language is the whole reason why Sinhalese nationalism is even a thing. Why? It's because the Sinhala Only Act implemented by the Sinhalese-dominated government. I don't think you understand Sri Lankan history if you believe that. Sinhalese nationalism began to develop during the colonial era. The British created this idea that Sinhalese are "Aryans" and Tamils are "Dravidians" in order to divide the population of the island. That is one of the contributing factors to nationalism in the country. The Tamils and Sinhalese believed the British and both groups tried to counteract each other by judging each other. The Tamil nationalists claimed they were superior because they were "pure" whereas they claimed the Sinhalese were inferior because they were "mixed", having formed through the mixing of Indo-Aryans, Dravidians, Malay, Vedda and Mongoloid people, which is what they claimed. The Sinhalese nationalists claimed the Tamils were inferior because they were "Dravidian" and not "Aryan". The whole thing is rooted in ethnicity, language and outdated pseudo-racial terms. Nowadays, the pseudo-racial terms don't play a role but language still does.
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No he's right, that's how we address him because "Buddha" is a title so we say "the Buddha".
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@LeedsunitedNepal Aryan isn't a race, it's a term that means "noble" in Sanskrit.
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@LeedsunitedNepal "Arya" and "Aryan" are the same thing, they're variations of the same word. "Aryan" is the English translation for the Sanskrit term "Arya". They're the same. Like I said, "Aryan" is a term used by ancient Indo-Iranian speaking tribes, it is not a race, never was. Hitler appropriated an indigenous Asian term used in Central-South Asia and associated it with White Europeans disregarding the fact that ancient Indo-Iranian speaking tribes in Iran and northern India are the ones who used. It is not a race.
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@sajeevanyoga4360 Wrong.
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@RM-yf2lu That's not correct. If we look at pop culture, which is one of the main factors of influence on contemporary culture, many people in Sri Lanka watch local films/shows, Bollywood films, South Indian films and Korean dramas and follow those trends. People are more in touch with the rest of Asia than they are with anything outside of it. When I was in Sri Lanka, I couldn't find a single Western show on local TV - it was just local shows or Sinhalese-dubbed Indian, Korean and Chinese TV dramas. Then I asked my grandpa and he told me that American shows aren't broadcast on local TV as often as they were in the 1990s. In the late 1990s, Indian shows became popular and then in the late 2000s, Korean shows became popular. Most people nowadays prefer Indian and Korean shows.
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@batissta44 They're not Europeans
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@ikeshkumar9246 Sri Lanka traditionally held close ties to Myanmar and Thailand and Myanmar still remains one of Sri Lanka's closest connections. There was intermarriage between Sri Lankan and Burmese royalty in the past so the spread of Theravada Buddhism from Sri Lanka to mainland Southeast Asia was inevitable.
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@sahilsingh6048 South Asia is a huge place so it would not be possible for starters. Secondly, the Buddha has no direct living descendants and as to what happened to those of the Shakya clan are unknown. People to claim to be their descendants, including entire ethnic groups in Nepal like Tharu people but there is actually no confirmation to these claims. I'm not surprised, I'm merely being pragmatic. I'm a South Asian Buddhist, I know how people love to claim association with him but care very little for his teachings.
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@sahilsingh6048 The Shakya clan does not exist anymore. Please be serious for a second and read about the Buddha's life and his family.
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He existed. The Buddha was never seen as a legendary figure with supernatural powers or god-given powers, nor did he intend to create a religion. He was just like the other sramana men who wandered ancient South Asia and engaged in meditation. There are many other sramana men in ancient India like Mahavira. None of these sramana men were seen as supreme beings. The West is only aware of the Buddha (when it comes to ancient Indian teachers, philosophers, gurus and sramana men) and thus conflate him with Abrahamic religious founders as if he is similar. The thing is he is not, the Buddha came from a very different cultural context and lived hundreds of years before Jesus or Muhammed.
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I should also add that the Buddha was merely a prince who decided to give up his royal title and become an ascetic (sramana man).
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@realrhetoric The right thing to do would be to let the past be the past. By trying to "right" the "wrongs" of the past, they ruined the peaceful race relations that existed during the ancient times. This is why Sri Lanka failed at becoming another Asian Tiger economy because it failed to manage its ethnic diversity properly. Same thing happened to Malaysia, the Malay leaders wanted to "right" the "wrongs" because the Chinese and Tamils were privileged in colonial Malaya. The difference is that Malaysia has made significant strides after seeing its southern neighbour become developed.
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@realrhetoric The Malay-dominated government of Malaysia expelled Singapore from the country due to severely strained relations between the Malays and Chinese in 1965. Singapore never wanted to gain independence but due to their expulsion, the Singaporeans put aside their differences and created an equal nation for Chinese, Malays and Tamils. Yes Bandaranaike is the root of the problem and did not think of the future. What would have been the right thing to do would have been to cultivate a shared identity as Sri Lankans, made English the lingua franca of the country in order to allow every group to be on the same page. Making minorities learn Sinhalese is unfair to the minorities because the Sinhalese already have an advantage. You can already see how mixed Sri Lankan culture is at a basic level whether that's in the capital or in the towns and rural areas. I've heard stories of Muslims cleaning and taking care of Buddhist roadside shrines and there are Sinhalese in Hambantota who speak in Malay with the Sri Lankan Malays due to the Malay impact in that region.
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@realrhetoric I respectfully disagree. There's no truce in Singapore. The country is the most successful multi-ethnic country in Asia. The four founding fathers of modern Singapore are all ethnically diverse, comprising people of Chinese, Peranakan and Tamil descent. It was a Tamil man that created the framework for Singapore's modern policies surrounding ethnic equality. If anything, it is the Malays that are disadvantaged in comparison to the Chinese and Indians and the government is aware of this. The Chinese and Tamils on the other hand have had it better and traditionally speaking they are the ones that have been in control of the Singaporean government even before Singapore gained independence from Malaysia. A major survey in 2018 in Singapore revealed most people believe that income inequality/class position is the most likely cause for discrimination in the country and not race or religion, illustrating how attitudes of the general public had changed in the past 53 years.
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Absolutely not, they're their own people with their own history and own culture.
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Except DNA is not the same. Kabul is a totally different area, they're Central Asian in genetics not South Asian.
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