The historical Buddha, known by his family name of Gotama and whose exact dates are still debated by modern scholars, was a thought-provoking thinker and philosopher. As a meditation technique, the theory of impermanence is symbolically represented in modern Buddhist rituals in Theravada countries such as Sri Lanka. For instance, when one observes a Buddhist who offers flowers to the Buddha, one can see the symbolic representation of anicca. One of the goals of such renderings has been to show that the Buddha was a pragmatic empiricist. Though the message of the Buddha as recorded in the Kalama sutta is noble, sometimes its practical application has violated the original intentions of the Buddha when he preached it to the Kalamas. In Buddhist literature, the Buddha and other Buddhists have presented and explained nirvana by means of negative language. Buddhist views towards the various other religions are diverse.
