Peter's India Blog

Throughout this semester, I've read so many Indian epics, including so many stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata. The characters in those traditional Indian epics were fascinating. Nevertheless, I've found myself liking Jataka Tales even more although I really like Ramayana and Mahabharata stories. So I decided to read more Jataka tales. I like the fact that Jataka tales always have some sort of life lesson or wisdom in the story. Hawk is one of my favorite animals. I like hawks because they have fierce, focused eyes, aiming at preys. So I wondered how hawks are portrayed in Jataka tales. Although I thoroughly enjoyed all the more Jataka stories, and other stories were all interesting and fun to read, this particular story of "the hawks and their friends" really caught my attention.  The story begins with describing ecosystem of the animals. Their habitats, including that of the hawks, were mentioned to explain how different animals lived in different places, a...

I've searched through and read several articles in Writers Write website. One article that really caught my attention was " Harnessing The Power Of Time In Your Storytelling ". This article caught my attention because I couldn't agree more on how time consuming the storytelling process really could be. I'm also struggling to manage and set aside time to write stories. So I thought reading this article could really help me. And it did! I even like the very beginning of this article. Obviously, the author of this article was highly poetic and creative person, so he described in a uniquely poetic way: "the sky was low and turning to a dirty purple twilight." I really like how the author described how he felt about flying time: " I was conscious of time—not as anything artificial and clear as the white digits on the face of an iPhone, but as something moving us all along, me along. Something moving within me, inside of me, even as it moved outsid...

Throughout this semester, I've read so many Indian epics, including so many stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata. The characters in those traditional Indian epics were fascinating. Nevertheless, I've found myself liking Jataka Tales even more although I really like Ramayana and Mahabharata stories. The biggest reason why I like Jataka tales so much is that each one of Jataka stories teaches readers some kind of life lesson or general wisdom. So I've decided to read more Jataka tales this week. One of my favorite animals has always been monkey. Usually they are the symbol of cleverness and high intelligence like humans. But in the story of the stupid monkeys, it was different and that's why this story really caught my attention. It has a really interesting beginning. The king's gardener wanted to enjoy the king's holiday and delegate his work to monkeys. I like how the gardener honestly admitted his intention without much cunning or tactic: "To-day my f...

I did read another version of Buddha story some weeks in the past, but I really wanted to discover more about this fascinating Indian epic character. I have grown up in a Buddhist household, but I didn't learn much about the details and who Buddha truly was although I was attending the temple. So I decided to read another version of Life of Buddha story, narrated by Herold. Although the characters were essentially same, but how the stories were told was completely different. The particular plot in the story that I didn't read in the previous version was the Asita's prediction part. It's interesting how both Buddhism and Hinduism, which both originated in India, have the same goal: to overcome the cycle of re-birth. And Buddha in the story was the one who would eventually overcome such unfortunate cycle. Wow this is such a powerful prediction by Asita:"This has happened to you, O noble, generous and hospitable king, because you love duty and because you are...