Escape the Ordinary....

For this reading assignment I decided to go back over the Jatakas to see if there was something new that caught my eye at the end of the semester. Having read so much new information and had the creative juices flowing through my brain for 16 weeks, I thought it might be fun to browse back through these to see if there is something that I can base my very last story on. So far, these have been my favorite stories to retell throughout the semester. 1st thing I learned, they were told from Buddha. I had read more things from Buddha this semester, but had no idea that we started our semester off this way! Well...I feel dumb now. The Foolish Timid Rabbit I did a story about this Jataka and added it to my portfolio for the semester. However, I've read so many different versions of this story this semester that it was nice to go back to the original and see how each adaption changed the story just slightly to be told in the author's own words. It's fun to see how many differ...

For this assignment, I chose to finish up the Jataka tales about Buddha. Eastern Stories and Legends by Shedlock. A link to the stories can be found here . 1. The Crow That Thought It Knew This story is about the Buddha that is reborn as a crow. There was a great famine in the land and all the crows left the area. One crow left to go to the area where the Buddha lived. He saw the Buddha crow dive under the water and catch fish for it's meal. The crow that came to the area thought it would be good to be a servant of this crow that he too could have food to eat. Then the crow was not happy with the arrangement so he thought he could catch his own fish. Viraka, the Buddha fish, warned him that he was not meant to dive into the water like that and that he would not be successful in his ventures. The other crow did not listen to Viraka and drown trying to catch his own fish in the water. 2. The River-Fish and The Money This story is about Buddha born into a wealthy family. He went...

For this assignment, I decided to continue my reading on Buddha and read some more of Eastern Stories and Legends by Shedlock. A link to these stories can be found here . 1. The Hawk and the Osprey This is a story about a male hawk who married a female hawk and she told him that they needed friends to protect them. She recommended the Osprey, the Lion and the Tortoise. One day, there were men in the area and they were going to roast the hawk's babies for dinner. They called upon the osprey and he came and put out the fire of the men several times to distract them from getting the baby birds. Then when the osprey was tire, they called upon the tortoise to help. He gathered mud from the lake and also put out the fire several times to distract the men from getting the hawk's babies. Then, once the tortoise was tired, they called upon the lion. The lion roared and the men ran away. And they lived happily ever after. I think this story is a wonderful telling of true friendship...

For this assignment I chose to continue reading the Eastern Stories and Legends by Sheldock which can be found here . 1. The Bull That Demanded Fair Treatment This is a story about a bull who was given to a Brahmin. The Brahmin raised it very well and treated the animal as if it were his son. When the bull was grown and strong, it wanted to do something to repay his owner. So he told the brahmin to bet the neighbor 1000 (whichever currency they used) that he, the bull, could pull 100 carts. The brahmin did so, but when it came time to pull them, he called the bull names. The bull didn't like this so he just sat there. When the bull talked to the master, he explained to him that he had never done anything wrong so he didn't understand why he would call him names. So the bull told him to bet 2000 and he would win it for him as long as he no longer called him names. The brahmin this time called him his beauty and the bull pulled the 100 carts and won the brahmin his money back ...

For this reading assignment I chose to read Eastern Stories and Legends by Shedlock. Which can be found here . 1. The Hare That Ran Away This is based off the Foolish Timid Rabbit. I did The Chase story based off this. I did find it interesting to read this version though. In the original, the Earth was breaking apart but in this version the Earth is falling in. The do keep to original theme of fruit falling from the tree though and that is what scared the hare. I also thought it was interesting that in this version of the story they tell the lion to be Buddha. I think this brings an interesting perspective to the lion character and explains a little how he could remain so calm and be so wise when all the other animals were panicking. 2. The Monkey and Crocodile This is the story of the crocodile that tricked to trick the monkey so that he could kill him and give the monkey's heart to his wife. In the end, the monkey outwitted the crocodile and told him that his heart was han...

For this assignment I chose to read the Life of Buddha by Ferdinand Herold. Which can be found here! The first story is of King Suddhodana and Queen Maya. The king is described as a good king that is kind and gentle to his subjects. The queen is the embodiment of all things good and wonderful. The story goes on to tell a tale of how the queen asked the king for a favor. Because there was so much suffering in the world, she wanted to live in the tower high above the city and there she would surround herself with lovely things. She would be abstinent and live there forever. The king granted her favor, but promised to always be kind to those who needed it. She went up to the tower and life was good. I feel like this could be told in so many different ways. How someone sacrifices themselves for the good of all people. Maybe could do a war story for this one? Or like a battle scene?  The next story is Maya's dream. This tells about how she has a dream that she is pregnant, but wit...

For this assignment, I chose to watch the Epified videos, The Seven Secrets of the Goddess. Which can be found here . Theses videos are by  Devdutt Pattanaik. Gaia's Secret Part 1 Gaia is the earth mother in Greek mythology. A maid to Renas, the god of the stary sky. In order for her son to be born, she had to castrate the father. From the blood drops of the castration, Aphrodite was born. As well as the Arineas, the goddesses of retribution. Gaia's son, Kronos, took over as king. He ate all his children so that they would not overthrown his reign. However, Gaia saved a son, Zeus, from being killed by Kronos. Zeus kills him and takes over ruling the gods from Mount Olympus. It then goes on to tell another story of Sedna and her father. They are in a boat and are attacked by seagulls. To save himself, he throws his daughter overboard. When she tries to climb back in, he cuts off her fingers. When she tries again, he cuts off her arm. (Okay, at this point, I'm thinking w...

For this assignment, I chose to watch the Epified Krisha videos Part B You can find a list of these here ! 11. Krishna Humbles Brahma This one talks about how Krishna was eating with his friends by the lake. When Brahma saw this, he didn't understand. He then kidnapped Krishna's friends and all the cows. Krishna then recreated his friends and the cows from himself so that the villagers wouldn't be upset. A year had gone by and when Brahma returned, he saw all the Krishna was capable of. He then dropped to his knees and asked Krishna for his forgiveness. 12. Krishna Rides Hastin In this story, Hastin is the bull in town that everyone is scared of. Krishna says that he is going to ride the bull by the end of the month. No one believes him. Krishna spends the next month in the stables with the bull everyday. He gets closer and closer and even feeds the bull treats. At the end of the month, Krishna is able to get close enough to get on the bull and ride him. The village...

This week for the “reading” I decided to watch some videos on YouTube that were retellings of The Mahabharata.   Found here In the first video, Shantanu the Unfortunate, the intro kind of explains that if you view the stories as how Karma works, then you will understand that everything is the result of what happened before it and the cause of what happens next. I thought that was a really interesting perspective to take on these and kind of explains how a lot of the stories interconnect. The first story, Shantanu and the Unfortunate, is how he married a woman and the woman made him promise that he would ask no questions about her judgement. After they were married, she drown 7 of their children. On the eighth, he questioned why she was doing this. She answered that she had promised to free 8 celestial beings from mortality for crimes that had been committed long ago. Because he has asked her questions, she left with the eighth child and he was devastated. I still think th...

For this reading assignment, I read The Giant Crab and Other Tales retold by W.H.D. Rouse. In the first story, Union is Strength, it tells a story about a man that catches birds. He sits by the water and when they get close, he throws a net over them. The birds come up with a plan to all work together and fly away with the net. They put the net on a bush and escape. This going on for some time and the man is sad that he is not catching any birds. But he realizes that if he waits, then the birds will start to bicker…and bicker they did! Soon, they were not working together at all and the man was able to take home his catch. I think this story is a short and simple example of why teamwork is so important. Obviously in this story it means life or death. However, there are all kinds of examples in real life that teamwork is the only way to accomplish a goal. Find the link for this story  here! The next story that caught my interest was The Quail and the Falcon. This is a ...

For this reading assignment, I read part B of the More Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt. Again, I like these versions of the stories because they are stripped down to their simplest form so they are easily translated and understandable. The first story that I read that caught my eye was The Foolhardy Wolf. This is a story about a wolf that begs a lion to be his servant. The deal is that the wolf has to scope out the food each morning and tell the lion. The lion will kill the food and then share it with the wolf. The wolf gets the idea after a while that he is strong enough to kill an elephant by himself. He convinces the lion that he is capable of doing this. Knowing that it won’t turn out well, the lion plays along with the wolf’s plan. One morning the lion sees an elephant and tells the wolf about it. The wolf misses his mark and falls down and is crushed to death by the elephant. This story instantly brought up scenes from The Lion King. I could see a hyena trying to convince Sc...

The first story I read was The Girl Monkey and the String of Pearls from More Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt. I liked these versions of the stories because the language it was written in is more simple so you get the moral of the story straight forward. I know these were written more for children, but to me, it seems easier to write these in my own version and expand on them from there. In this story, it’s about a monkey that steals the pearls of the queen. The guard devises a plan to find out which monkey stole the pearls. He puts glass beads on the branches and each of the monkeys grabs up one…except the monkey that stole the pearls. When the other monkeys say it’s too bad she didn’t get any, she pulls out the strings of pearls she stole to show off to the others. The guard snatched her up and that was that. I think this could easily be translated into a thief that wanted to show off their goods and that’s how they get caught. Surprisingly, a lot of criminals are shockingly d...

Image Source:  Pandavas Brothers So I'm not sure if this is supposed to be the Pandavas Brothers or not. However, this is what I got when I googled "Pandavas Brothers". I also saw something akin to this in several of the stories for this section so it leads me to believe that it is in fact some weird rendition of them. I haven't seen any Indian art work like this, but it's interesting. Kind of creepy and steampunk-ish... I used the public domain version again. I like that someone else is reading it. I can't pronounce all the words right so it's nice to have someone who knows what they are doing read them. There were two stories out of this one that I found I could rewrite later on. There are as follows: Riddles at the Lake The 5 Panduvas brothers hunted a deer. Because of the hunt, they were thirsty. They found a lake, but before they drank, a voice told them to answer the riddles before they drank or they would die. Four out of the five ...

This week I'm catching up on the Mahabharata Part B. For this reading assignment I decided to try out the public domain version of the story. This had audio with it and it made it easy to listen and take notes. There were two stories that really resonated with me and I could picture them in a different version to tell a story in my own words. The first was  The House of Fire . This version was found in Indian Heroes by C.A. Kincaid. The queen and her children came to the palace of lac. The house was soaked in oil and ready to burn. Vidura warned them of this and begged them to dig an underground tunnel so that they may escape. When they dug the tunnel, Vidura returned to seek revenge on the guards. He burnt the guard shack, but little did he know that there was a woman and her children there to beg for food. The next morning when they village awoke to a smoldering palace, they assumed the bodies they found were Queen Kunti and her children and they wept for their loss. The e...

After reading the rest of part A of the Mahatbharata, there really wasn’t anything that just grabbed my attention. It talked about the son’s and wives of Pandu. How they were all trained together to be great warriors and how they were jealous of each other. They went off to fight a battle and the most jealous of them all lost the battle. The story that stuck with me the most out of all the stories in part A is still the one about the woman that had to give up her baby out of shame and then a woman down river found the child. She had been praying for a child to come and this was her chance. This really reminds me of The Prince of Egypt animated film. I watched this movie as a child I don’t know how many times. The stories are similar in that a woman puts her baby in a basket and into the sea. She is unable to keep her child. The child then is found by a woman as the basket floats in the water. In the Prince of Egypt this child is taken in by a royal family. This version of the story is...

This week we read the Mahabharata Part 1. Below are my detailed notes for each one; 1 Vyasa and Ganesha Vyasa was the author of the Mahabharata. Bhrama appears told Vyasa that Ganesha was going to be his scribe to write this epic. It goes on to explain how the story was told down through the generations. It goes on to tell a story about the fish that carried two children. A boy and a girl. They were born of the King Chedi. Chedi kept only the boy. The girl was raised by someone else. The female made a deal with a someone so she could lose her “fishy smell” She then gave birth to a baby on an island. This baby was Vyasa. He was called his because he wrote the scriptures or Vedas Source: http://ouocblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/pde-mahabharata-vyasa-and-ganesha.html Ganga Ganga took human form and married King Shantanu. She had made some promise to throw the first 8 into the river so that 1/8 of their powers would be bestowed upon her own child. She then started having childr...