Reading Notes: The Life of Buddha, Part A

Maya's Dream

One of the things I admire of this story is the essence of beauty described. From the beginning to the end nothing is described without great positivity other than the nervousness the king feels. I feel the minor details of the beauty to what is being taken place are all perfectly written to show how good of a thing is taken place. The reader is able to realize through the multiple cases of positivity from the God's to the Brahmans how good of an event this is. As a writer I need to take note of how this story uses a higher power to communicate such strong things in a good moment. Normally higher entities come down in bad times but this is a rejoicing moment which this story perfectly uses higher entities for. I think one way to do this is to show the promise to come for example when it says what all Buddha must do to be revered.

Siddartha is Eager to Hear the Great Truths

In this part of the Buddha stories what I took away was the ability for a writer to disguise characters. I found it impressive for the Gods to be disguised as a beggar. I know this takes place in other stories but it is always a great way to convey the meaning of something, or rules, and even just a way to hint for future plot mechanisms. The way the beggar describes himself truly shows how little he has too which I think should go for any description of a character. I think someone describing themselves as a character truly helps rather than just the narrator describing characters. I also thought the way the last paragraph was written truly showed the harshness within the story. The way that everyone is described as dead truly shows the graveness in my opinion. Repeating words truly shows the seriousness just as description does because the repetition puts it in the readers head. I tried this in some of my stories but I haven't done so in such  serious way, so next time I write a story if it is something to be seen as serious then I will definitely remember to repeat what I want to be engraved in the mind of the reader.

A picture of a statue of Buddha on Pixabay. 

Bibliography:

The Life of Buddha by Andre Ferdinand Herold (1922).
The specific section links are above in the text.