How did Buddha influence world history?

Answer 1

Like founders of other religions, he has had an enormous influence. I haven't checked figures but I'll guess there are somewhere around a billion people who call themselves Buddhists. So now there are, in many many countries around the world, Buddhist temples and centers; there are whole countries where the main religion is Buddhism and there are countless rituals, ceremonies, superstitions, and other sorts of beliefs that have roots, at least partly in Buddha's teachings. Many people have businesses dependent on Buddhists. Some are vegetarian restaurants, others are shops that sells clothing for ordained people, others are shops that sell equipment and other various things that are used by ordinary people at their homes in their everyday lives for religious purposes, and other things that are used at temples, by both lay people and ordained people. Apparently there have been no major, worldwide wars in the name of Buddhism. There have been wars and battles and whatnot fought by people who called themselves Buddhists. I don't know if any governing powers have ever fought battles of any scale, large or small scale, in the name of Buddhism. Nor do I know if any governing powers where the official religion is Buddhism, have ever waged battles against any other people. ==new answer==Buddha added from his own experience the understanding of suffering. There are two kinds of pain. The pain of the gain , or understanding what the pain is for and thereby getting past it, or the pain that lingers from attempting to just make the problem go away, while ignoring the cause. Jesus would later describe this as trying to serve two masters. Either toward God, or learning, or mammon, which is being caught up only in the physical existence, falsley thinking that's all there is, or blindness, which is the process of ignoring.

Pain is simply a way to get our attention.