Epics of India

Quite a few of these stories were the same as the Jataka tales we read before, but there were also plenty of new ones. The on I enjoyed the most was a story of a golden bowl. In it, there were two merchants who would travel to different towns, agreeing to split the towns into their own respective areas. The first merchant was very greedy, and came upon an old lady and little girl who were dirt poor. To make the little girl happy, the old lady offered an old bowl from her late husband in trade, not knowing it was made of gold. The merchant realized he could get it for nothing with a little bit of acting, so he said it was worthless, dropped it in the dirt and walked off. Seeing that the greedy merchant had already been down this street, the nice merchant decided to try and sell his wares here. He came upon the old lady and realized her bowl was gold and gave her all his wares for it, left town and sold it for a very large sum. The greedy merchant came back later to offer a small sum to

Here is the link for the video I watched on Narayan for extra reading this week. First, this video talks about the god Narayan, obviously. It talks about reincarnation, and how this makes Hindus much different from Muslims and Christians. It tells of how Narayan is sometimes thought of as time itself. The next part that really interested me was the part with Markandeya. There was a lot of talk about how things are destroyed in order for new things to be created, and how then entirety of the universe is one massive cycle of creation and destruction. This part kind of segways into the reincarnation again talking about how death is only a small pause rather than a complete halt to any entity. The video later gets back to this and talks about the kind of culture that stems from this kind of belief and how no one has a sense of urgency in their life, because they know that death isn't the end of it. Markandeya Bibliography: Author: Devdutt Pattanaik Title: Seven Secrets fr

I started by looking at an Indian holiday called Janmashtami  which is actually just a celebration of the birth of Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu. There is a bunch of fasting, eating, dancing, and meditating that happens in celebration of this holiday. This made me look closer at Krishna himself, and I learned quite a bit about how he has been portrayed through Hindu literature, and how those portrayals inspired dances such as  Kathakali , which is like a play and a dance all in one. They also wear costumes like the one below. Kathakali Costume From that page, I also found a link to Bharata Muni . He was essentially the father of Indian theater and was an ancient dramaturg. 

Here is this really neat video previewing some of the art from the graphic novels in Bizzell. I haven't had the chance to go look at them, but maybe once my semester tapers off, I'll finally get the chance to head over. The art in this looks really well done, so it would just be nice to look through once before I graduate. And here is the cover one one of those novels :

A few weeks ago, I started looking into deskercises for this class, and I've gotta say, they are still pretty useful. I use them quite often, and I find that I am less stiff when I leave the chair or wake up the next morning. I have also added the shadow boxing stretch from this link to my repertoire of stretches. It is just a fun one that I really enjoy. I think I will continue doing these exercises well into the future. link

The motto I use isn't actually one that I necessarily made up, but one that I have always used, just because it is perfect for me. It might seem silly, but it is "Keep moving forward" from Meet the Robinsons, which is a pretty great movie. I really like this motto, because it helps to keep me from stopping whenever I run into some difficult problem.