religion and mythology 15.2.10

buddhism is highly related to mythology but not the greek mythology we have been looking at it differs as the chinese buddhists and indian buddhists are different.
In India Buddhism was influenced by Brahmanism another form of the hindu religion. They shared the same ideas about the cycle of birth and afterlife/reincarnation they both also inclued devas who were traditional indian gods and Asuas which are traditional indian demons.
A main figure in Indian buddhist myths was Amitabha who was a person who had become enlightened but he was postponed entering nivarna and was to help others gain the same enlightenment. According to the myth Amitabha was born from a lotus flower and helped buddhists who worshiped him.


In china The Mahayana Buddhism was the practised form which had alot more gods and myths than Theravada Buddhism. Chinese buddhists  created a complex hierarchy of gods and goddesses  one of the most importnat was Shang Di whose assistant Dongyue Dadi  was known as the freat emporer of the eatern peak. below him were many other gods that cntrolled other parts of human life.


In both cultures there were also shared important buddhist gods such as The four kings or heaven, The four kings of hell and the kitchen god.


I found all this quite interesting but at the same time confusing as tehre are two different cultures that share the same religion but have different beliefs within that. and it seems liek a very complex religion to be part of.
i found all my info at 
http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Be-Ca/Buddhism-and-Mythology.html

Odysseus; Homework i should have done yesterday :)

Odysseus
-king of Ithica
-married to penelope
-sone of laertes
-father of Telemacas
-The odyssey is the story of his journey home from the battle of troy and all the hiccups he meets along the way with his not so clever sailors and how his cunning and intelligance gets them out of all their troubles
-the grandson of Aeolus
even thoug it is said in the odyssey that laertes is his father the internet says that his actual father sisyphus .

8/2/11 what i believe

I believe that all myths have some truth to them but i definitely do not believe in god or gods. I believe in science as it has proof unlike religion that is all just on paper. If you think about it it makes sense the bible or otehr such things never mention the dinosaurs "god' just made people in 7 days but science has proof of evolution and dinosaurs like fossals etc..
I'm not against people that do believe in gods and such as its their choice and good on them for believing in something bigger than us but i just cant buy i personally.
i also believe my cat is secretly god, just because of the way he looks at the world and how he acts like he owns the world its a beautiful thing being a cat i mean (:

The Odyssey

Last year in drama we did The Odyssey. at first it seemed like it was going to be boring but then we read into it and it just seems extremely confusing.. but as we started rehearsing a bit more and getting to know it better i found it extremely interesting and even after seeing it about a million times i never got bored of the story. I played fate 2 at first i only auditioned for that part because i didn't want to have heaps of different characters like everyone else had to but i ended up really enjoying them as they were so powerful and influential to the other characters and we got to wear cool makeup and knit.LOLZ.. my favorite part of the story is either the scene with the cyclops probably just because of the way Jack made it so funny and the lighting was cool or t he scene is hades where Odysseus is looking for someone and talks to his mum and is getting chased by the shades and we got to yell at them and the ligting was blue and we had music going. This lil post isnt actually about classics to much just havin a chatr with myself but thass cool its somewhat related