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Throughout our lives, there are many things people strive for.
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Our overall objectives according to acting teacher Ivona Chubak.
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And they range from either power to love or be loved,
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to stay alive, to have children, to get married, have a great career, be validated or simply find peace in ones self.
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And within many countries and peoples around the world, Buddhism is a religion and a way of life
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that strives to give peace to its followers.
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But within this religion what can we learn about it that we already may not know or somebody else may know.
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Hey everybody, welcome back to FTD-Facts.
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Now here on the channel, normally we like to talk about people, cultures and places from around the world.
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But my buddy Leroy has been doing a lot of stuff on religion and, you know, he was like Dave, do you want to handle buddhism, because you kind of like that stuff.
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And I was like, yeah, for sure.
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Because here on the channel, we've learnt a lot of great stories about people and learnt so much about the world.
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And although you may not have studied buddhism or know a buddhist,
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its actually very prevalent in certain fictional stories, such as the Jedis in Star Wars or Robert Heinleins Stranger in a Strangerland.
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And even movies like the Matrix have buddhist themes.
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Now before i begin this video, i want to know what is your favorite religion. Let me know down there.
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If you don't even celebrate it, but you kind of like aspects to it, let me know also.
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But lets get talking about buddhism, because i find it a very fascinating religion,
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because well, there is some interesting things it has, that other religions don't.
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So, buddhism is a religion that believes that there is life after death.
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And it began in the region of India around the 6. to 4. century B.C.E.
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Now strangely enough, you might think that buddha is the name of the person that buddhists look up to and pray to.
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But actually buddha is more than a name. It also means the one that is awake or the enlightened one.
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Now many people may think that Gautama buddha is a God or Deity that people of the buddhist religion look up to and pray to.
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But that's not necessarily true.
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He was a man very much like us and buddhists know him as the one who brought buddhism to its current level, reaching the highest level of enlightenment.
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Also one thing that is fascinating about buddhism is that there is no central text to tell you what the religion is about,
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unlike say the Bible or the Quran.
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Buddhism has many different scriptures such as the scripture of Pali Canon which is for the Theravada buddhists,
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as well as the Mayahana Sutras which are for the Mayahana buddhists,
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and lets not forget the scriptures that the Vajrayana buddhists follow.
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And of course the are other stems of buddhism as well, but these are the main three.
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However, with all these scriptures they may have some subtle differences.
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The route of buddhism focusses around the 4 nobles of truth.
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And they are the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering,
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the truth of the end of suffering and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering.
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And that one feels very long, but why is it all about suffering?
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Well, this is because buddhists feel that ignorance and desire is the cause of pain within your and my life.
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And yes, buddhists might seem like very calm collective people, they do in fact celebrate and like to party.
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Compared to other countries, they have a 3 day new years festival.
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But their three day new years celebration is focussed on the first full moon of April, instead of January 1.
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It occurs that they also celebrate Buddhas birthday, sometimes known as Vesak it also follows a full moon cycle.
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And it usually happens in May, at least for the next upcoming years it does.
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But keep in mind, it wasn't always like this.
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They didn't celebrate or have an actual kind of day for Buddhas birthday until about the 1950's.
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Buddhas birthday wasn't official until the very first international buddhist conference in 1950.
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Being called the world fellowship of buddhists.
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And it was at that point they decided when the celebration should happen.
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And this fellowship was founded by Gunapala Malalasekera, in what was at the time Colombo, Ceylon.
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So have you ever seen the symbol of Buddhism?
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Well, it can get very, very confusing.
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Because the symbol of Buddhism looks very similar to the Nazi symbol.
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Yeah, the Svastika.
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But just so you know, there is one difference, for example the Svastika of the Nazi Party is tilted slightly
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and generally is surrounded by white and red.
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Whereas the lines in the buddhist Svastika are generally straight up and down or left and right.
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Buddhists are also huge a believer of pro life and karma.
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And with that, they feel that suicide is a waste on karma, and as well buddhists monks will not kill a single animal.
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That's right. Not even a bug. Not even a pest. A rodent, no.
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So if you guys have arachnophobia, you just gonna have to get over it if you want to be a buddhist.
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But just because you step on a small bug or a an organism and kill it, you're not going to perish for eternity.
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This is because with your karma you didn't intend to kill something, but because you accidentally did, you're still good.
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It also should be noted that there is really no God in Buddhism.
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It is an inner reflective religion that is about your choices that make you whole.
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Now buddhists also understand that there are Gods and Gods are out there,
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but they feel like that your inner will can be stronger than a god and that you make your choices and it is not determined by anything else.
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Now the one question that I have and you might be wondering too is with buddhism being such an interesting religion,
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how many buddhists are there out in the real world?
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Well, if you look at China, it is currently the country with the most buddhists,
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with approximately 244 million people practicing the buddhist religion.
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However, for the worlds population, its really hard to calculate.
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But they have estimated that there is approximately 488 million to 535 million people in the entire world, practicing this way of life.
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And although China may have the most Buddhists in the world, its not the country with the highest amount of buddhists per capita.
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That goes to Cambodia which 96% of their citizens, practice the religion.
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With Thailand and Myanmar, having over 87% of their people practicing the religion.
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And when you look at India, where the religion started, there is only about point 8% of people actually practicing this religion.
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And that may seem small compared to the Christian faith, which is an estimated 2.2 billion.
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Buddhism remains to be older and is one of the oldest religions that is still practiced today.
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I hope you guys all enjoyed this video because this is just a brief look at some of the interesting things about buddhism.
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And if you guys know of any facts that we missed, please let us know down there.
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Who knows, we might get a part 2 and throw them in.
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And of course, if we get some facts wrong, please let us know down there in the comments below.
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We're totally cool about being like, yeah wait, we got it wrong, thats fine.
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But this is been us looking at another religion throughout the world and this is buddhism.
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But as always, it is really cool to learn about new religions and new people from all around the world.
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It's great to see that so many people out there are bettering themselves spiritually and emotionally.
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And as well as you guys for taking the time to watch this video, you're guys are expanding your knowledge as well.
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And of course, getting a better understanding of new cultures.
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And Buddhism is a religion that focusses on moving forward in a positive life.
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A way of life that looks at our pains and struggles within ourselves and gets to the root of the problem.
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The root to ourselves and the understanding of our own souls.
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For the soul is the truth of who we are and without our soul we would be lost.
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And as buddha once said: we will no be punished for our anger but we will be punished by our anger.