Caitlyn's Corner

Image: Mirror in Water,  Source In the Japanese Mythology unit, one of the stories that really interested me was The Miraculous Mirror .  The Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, is tricked by a mirror.  Her fellow goddesses tell her there is a princess more beautiful than anything else and tell her to look into the mirror to see her.  When Amaterasu looks in, she thinks she sees a rival and becomes furious.  This short little story caught my attention, because of the similarities it has with other myth stories from around the world.  In Greek mythology, Narcissus sees his own reflection and falls in love with it, not knowing it is an image of himself. In the children's story that most Americans are familiar with, Snow White, the Queen asks a mirror who is the most beautiful.  Upon learning that she has a rival, she becomes furious.  As I read more myths from around the world, I think it is fascinating when you begin to see similarities in stories from different places.  It makes you wonder

Torii  at  Ama-no-Iwato  Shrine, Takachiho, Miyazaki Prefecture As I was starting my first reading for this week, I became curious about Japanese Mythology. Since I know very little about it, I went to the Wikipedia page for  Japanese Mythology  and decided to read a bit about it before starting my reading.  From here I clicked on the  Shinto  page, where I learned about the traditional religion of Japan.  As I was reading this article, I became curious about  Kami . The Shinto article kept giving different definitions for Kami, so I went to that page.  After clicking this page, I discovered that they are spirits worshiped in Japan.  In this article, I found the etymology for the word to better understand what type of spirit they were talking about and if they were found in other religions.  In this section of the article, I discovered that the spirits are most like  Deva . Naturally, linguistic nerd me clicked this page to learn more about the word.  Here, I learned that it is a S

Life of Buddha: Maya's Dream Image: Buddha, Alejandro Rojas, Source I chose this article, because back in high school, many people in my class read Siddhartha and I always wish I had read it.  Buddhism has always been so fascinating to me, but I really don't know that much about it.  Before I started reading Maya's Dream , I realized that I have no idea who this is.  A quick Wikipedia search brought me to an article on her.  Maya is the birth mother of Buddha and her sister was the first Buddhist nun.  I really liked understanding who Maya was before reading this story about her.  It gave the story more depth and understanding. Slightly off topic, but as I am studying linguistics, I have to talk about it: Maya means "illusion" in Sanskrit, one of the primary languages of Buddhism.  I am curious as to if this name meaning will add anything to the story moving forward. The Life of Buddha: Maya's Dream  by Andre Ferdinand Herold (1922)