You’ve never heard the story about the buddha growing up cloistered from suffering and then seeing the world and being moved by the amoutn of suffering he saw when he left his home? In any case, that’s what I draw from Buddhism (among other things) – it’s not the only form of Buddhism obviously. You don’t have to do the same.

In which vein I should apologise and thank you for catchign my error in saying South Asia when I meant India – sorry for that to all. Though given the magnitude of India, I assume I’m wrong about that as well

I disagree with most of the rest of what you wrote – poverty is everyone’s business, especially those who lay claim to some kind of moral authority.

Hindus traveling to China would find equivalents for their Gods among the “Chinese” Gods. This kind of thing is pretty common among the heathens. So if Hindus say that Kaaba is a Shiva temple, it is simply acknowledging the obvious that the Kaaba was a heathen temple before being defiled by Mohammad’s iconoclasm.

You’re right. They were Buddhist travelers from Southern India. I think that I deserve another SM award. This time, a Carl Jr. cheeseburger like the one that hot Hindu babe advertised about.

Religion is for people who are terrified that the sky might fall on their head, or something terrible might happen to them. So, they need something or somebody with supernatural powers to protect them. The purpose of religion since the ancient times has always been to scare and control ignorant people.

The purpose of this commercial is also to rile up the same ignorant folks to create some controversy. And it’s working.

Religion is outdated, like monarchs and maharajahs and knights. It’s a shame that priests still enjoy a respectable position in our society. The church, the priest, the temple and all such establishments, capitalize on peoples’ fear, to fulfill their own selfish goals. The marketing folks in this ad campaign is doing exactly the same thing – using people’s prejudices to their own advantage.

Not quite. Religious affiliation in ancient India was very fluid so you’d have a lot of people revering any priest who came by, Buddhist, Jain, or whatever other Hindu order. Intellectual fashions would generally rise and fall the same way they do in any realm.

As for karate, it wasn’t really “invented” in India. Certain exercises, yogic postures, and martial training was exported to China by Buddhist travelers. This was the inspiration for the development of a purely hand-to-hand art of Kung-Fu invented by Chinese monks since they were forbidden to carry weapons and needed to protect themselves from bandits.

Karate was invented much much later when Chinese culture was exported to Japan and recontextualized there.

Also, Buddhism was the dominate religion in South Asia around 400 AD. From the South of India, where Karate was invented/spread by Buddhists to the East, to the very far north in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, Buddhism was the dominant way of life (and egalitarian, mind you). The Hunnic Rajputs, when the migrated to north west India around 300 AD, were originally Buddhists, but they became Hindus with a very high caste around the late 300s AD or early 400 AD.