Reading Notes: The Life of Buddha Part B

In the second part of the reading Siddhartha sees the real truths about life. He thinks the world is all happy places, where everyone is joyous. Then one day he decides to go out of the palace to see the nature and admire its beauty however, gods sends a a man who is sick to his way to enlighten him. He sees a sick man and becomes disturbed of how the life is and how it could end for him. He goes out again and sees old age and is greatly disturbed by the thought of loosing beauty. The third time he goes out he sees death, when a group of people are carrying out a dead man. He had lived most of his life in a palace sheltered by his dad, but then he sees the real truths of beauty, old age and death. He becomes troubled with those thoughts and seeks to give up pleasure so he leaves his palaces. The queen becomes really sad for his lover leaving her behind without any words. I think this was one of the sad scene and I would change it around by maybe letting Siddhartha and his wife go together in the forest like Rama and Sita to seek peace and answers to the question of life.

Bibliography: The Life of Buddha by Herold

Buddha leaving his family and luxury behind 

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Reading Notes: The Life of Buddha Part A

For this week's reading I decided to do the life of Buddha. It was interesting how Buddha came to be. I like the part of the queen going to the forest for peace and gives birth to a god like child in the forest with the help of gods blessings and king. King comes to the forest to see his child and names him Siddhartha. It was also interesting to see him meditating for the first, how on a random day he walks through a village and finds a tree with a shadow and starts pondering eventually loosing himself into meditation. Many people who passed him spoke great words on how his laws of life will change the way of living for many. IfI try to recreate a story, it will be on medication and how it plays a huge role not only into Hindu religion but also Buddhism. Maybe come up with a better way of Siddhartha finding himself meditating. Another scene that I found interesting was the way Siddhartha found his wife Gopa, it was similar to other epics, where the princes face each other to see who has the most potential to marry the girl. It shows us how long arrange marriage had been going on and how it still is.

Bibliography : The Life of Buddha by Herold

Siddhartha meditating under a tree

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Reading Notes: Jataka Tales Part B

White elephant helping out the carpenters 

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Some of the stories that interested me were the king's white elephant and the ox who never envied the pig. On both of the stories I wish there were a little more context to it to show us the moral. In the first one, elephant's parent goes and helps out the carpenters in return for food and so she also teaches son to go help out the carpenters so they can feed her in return. Then one day king comes and visits the forest and see the white elephant and falls in love with her. The king pays the prices to carpenters in return for the elephant, which they all happily agree. That's the end of the story and I was not really a big fan of it so I would change the way, where carpenters feels sorry for doing it and learn their lesson on not taking things for greed. In the second story, the ox is jealous of farmer feeding the pig his choices of food but his mom tells him that the ox is eating food for his death. The daughter of the farmer is about to get married so the farmer was trying to fatten the pig up for a big feast. The ox becomes more appreciative of eating just grass to live longer. I thought the story was a little short and blend so maybe I could recreated it by adding more details of the ox getting mad and test his limits to later regret his decision.



Bibliography: Jataka Tales by Ellen Babbitt

Reading Notes: Jataka Tales Part A

One of the stories that interested me the most was "The Sandy Road." It not only had a moral at the end but also a happy ending. I like the context of the story of the merchants going to city to sell their goods, but could only travel at night as the sun would heat up the sand extremely hot. They all rested during the day and travels at night. They used water, fire and sun to cook food during the daylight. They way of trailing was by following stars patterns and one of the head, who takes care of ox falls asleep and looses the right path. He was so sure of reaching the city next day that he makes other merchants throw away all the water and food, but since they are lost they were in desperate need for water. They had to feed the ox to keep going. They did not loose any hope of finding water, so they go around the desert and look for plants. They find one and dig it up, right as one of the merchant was about to give up because they hit the rock, one of the other merchant saves not to give up and he goes and keep digging until they find water. It was nice to see to never give up theme and also to be cautious of where you are going.

Bibliography: Jataka Tales by Ellen Babbitt

Ox wagon in the dessert 

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Reading Notes: Krishna part B

Krishna and his brother are driven by the chariot to Mathura

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In the second part of the videos of Krishna that story got more intense as the baby Krishna was growing up to defeat his evil uncle Kansa. One of the scene that was interesting was when he first reachers Mathura and uses his powers to heal people of Mathura and even defeat an evil elephant. It was also interesting to see the chariot, who was talking Krishna and his brother Balram to Mathura saw the first glimpse of Krishna's old avatar. H e was just washing his face in a nearby river and saw a glimpse of Lord Vishnu. The best part about the film was when Krishna kills Kamsa, which leads to killing of Kansa as his last plan failed. That's also when he first meets his birth parents, where Kansa had locked them up. I was wondering how this story and his meeting with Pandavas was related as it did not seem to connect but at the and it kinds of makes sense as Krishna becomes the king of Dwarka.

Bibliography: Krishna by Epified TV (India)

Reading notes: Krishna Part A

Krishna as a child eating butter, which he stole from Gopies

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In this week's reading I decided to watch Krishna's videos. This story line was amazing, I loved all the videos that showed the birth of Krishna and how he was going to be slayer of Kansa. The most interesting story line was how Krishna was born. Even though Kansa knew that he was going to be destroyed by the eighth child of Vasudeva and Devaki, the birth of Vishnu was unstoppable. Kansa prisoned his sister Devaki and her husband Vaswedeva as he was afraid of being slaughtered by their child. I liked how when Krishna was born, gods helped Vasudeva saved his child by taking him across river Yamuna. It was nice to see the childhood of Krishna, where he misbehaved and caused small mischievous troubles around his town Gokul. It was interesting to see Krishna have a first battle as a child against the snake that poisoned his friends. He won against him just by playing with his flute. 

Bibliography: Krishna by Epified TV (India)

Week 11 story: A Greedy Student

University of Oklahoma campus 

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Once upon a time there was a student, who went to the University of Oklahoma. His name was Adam and he wanted to get good grades no matter what. He was taking organic chemistry with Mr. Roxin. It was one of his hardest class this semester, but he was so made up on getting an A. He was a straight 4.0 student and did not want this class to bring it down. On his first test, he got a C and he was stressed out as he has never gotten a C in his life before. He studied hard for it as well, yet he was not able to pull off a good grade for this class. Then one day as he was leaving his class, he overheard a one of the frat guy talking about having a study guide to the next test, which had some of the similar questions as the test. He never cheated on the test, but this time was considering it as grades mattered to him a lot. He wanted to get into Ivy league medical school so he overlooked the morals he was taught as a kid. The next lecture, Adam went up to the guy:

Adam: Hey, I am in this class and really struggling. I heard you have some study resources and was wondering if you can give them to me.

Frat guy: How do you know? Who told you?

Adam: I overheard you guys talking the other day

Frat guy: I can give it to you, but be aware that this is just a study guide. Do not solely rely on it for the exam. Also do not tell anyone where you got it from.

Adam: I won't, thank you so much!

Adam went to his apartment and knew that he heard them say it is similar to the exam. He had exam next week so he decided to just study the study guide and not even open the book. He was so set on just studying the study guide that he barley glanced at the lecture slides. Time flew by and it was time for the test. As he got to the test, he saw there was just one question that was from the study guide and nothing else was the same. He was mad as this was his chance for redemption to get the grades up. He walked out of the test feeling miserable.

Few days later as he got the grade back, he failed the test. He never saw this coming and his overall grade went down a whole letter grade to a D. The other guys knew not to just study guide and study the lecture material as well. The test was similar to lecture slides and everyone did well on this test. Adam was foolish and greedy for the letter grade A so he was bound to do anything, but he did not do as instructed and lost his 4.0 GPA. He felt guilty as he could have just studied the lecture slides and could have pulled of a B or even an A on this test. However, his greed and foolishness got to him.

Bibliography: The Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt

Author's note:
This story resembles one of the story from Jataka Tales, The Merchant of Seri. The original story was of a greedy merchant who tried to fool a lady by buying her gold pot for cheap. However, the second merchant came and bought it by telling the lady truth on her pot being gold, and the merchant traded all his pots for one gold pot and lived happily after. Meanwhile, when the greedy merchant came back it was gone. I tried to create a similar concept on greed, but I used used grades and our campus for the context. Adam's greed of getting an A to keep his 4.0 GPA got to him and he lost it by just studying one material. I created a moral of not to be greedy or foolish.