Week 5 Review: It's Midterm Time

This week was very stressful because I had THREE midterm exams... not fun. But I got through it! 

Stress Meme. Source: Flickr

I enjoyed the Write Music post that you included in this week's announcements. I also believe that sentence structure is crucial to become an excellent writer. 

Week 5 Reading Diary: The Mahabharata Part A

I am familiar with the Vedas from my yoga teacher training course, so I thought it was really neat that the same author, Vyasa, wrote both the Mahabharata and the Vedas. The beginning of the Mahabharata struck me as odd; more specifically, in Vyasa and Ganesha, the fact that King Uparichara’s semen fell into the water to impregnate a fish with twins and also that the girl had a fishy smell but she made a deal and became sweet-smelling from up to seven miles away make for a very original story.

As in the Ramayana, a reference to the lotus flower appears in King Shantanu and Ganga, which reads, “Her celestial garments had the splendor of lotus blooms…” This comes from a beautiful paragraph describing a goddess who King Shantanu believes to be Ganga in human form. I was confused why she was casting all of her children into the Ganges river but upon re-reading this section, it was very clear that she was making a sacrifice for Devavrata.

Sacred Lotus. Source: Wikimedia Commons

My first glance at King Shantanu and Satyavati made me think of the Sanskrit word ‘satya’, which means truthfulness according to The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Furthermore, another translation of satya, which I found on this Veda online glossary, is unchangeable; I love the concept of truthfulness and unchangeable as being synonyms. I wonder if the word satya has anything to do with the name Satyavati.

Tech Tip: Website

For this Tech Tip, I created a website for my future storybook, which I am thinking will be called Kurma and Karma! I have included a link to my Storybook Website here.