Saints and fables from India and Tibet

The Jataka tales are great fables from India. Buddhists hold them to be descriptions of the past lives of the Buddha prior to his rebirth as the prince Siddhartha, however this need not be explained outright. There are scores of Jatakas (pronounced Jah-ta-ka with an almost imperceptible stress on the first syllable, rather than Ja-TA-ka). One great collection is  entitled, "Buddhist Animal Wisdom Stories." Despite the title, there is no mention of Buddhism in any of the tales. Find it on Amazon. There are also many Jatakas involving human incarnations, such as when he was a young prince who offered his body to a starving tigress so she and her cubs could survive. When the young prince was later reborn as prince Siddhartha and became enlightened, the tigress and her four cubs were the five ascetics who had meditated with Siddhartha, abandoned him and then became the first five disciples when Buddha taught the 4 Noble Truths and the 8 Fold Path. You could totally  leave that detail out in 2nd grade and bring that part of the story back in 5th grade! The place where this compassionate act is said to have happened is called Namobuddha and is in Nepal.

  One of my favorite stories is popular in Tibet and tells of how a ship of sailors was capsized at sea and a giant sea turtle swam the entire crew to shore, where the turtle collapsed, exhausted. When he awoke he was covered with flies who were eating him. Rather than crawl back into the sea, which would drown the flies, the turtle let the flies eat him. Because of this connection, In the future the turtle was reborn as the Buddha and the crew and flies were reborn as his disciples.


There are so many great saints to share from India and Tibet. Milarepa is the foremost saint in Tibetan history. Perhaps a little subtle in some parts but an awesome and inspiring story.

In my view, the story of the Indian saint Asanga and the Dog is a must tell, but your class must be ready for a bit of the grotesque. If they are, it's a tear jerker. There's a great version told by the lama Sogyal Rinpoche online.

Two other Indian Buddhist saints known mainly in Tibet are Gelongma Palmo and Shantideva, who wrote one of the most incredible texts in all of Buddhism, the Way of the Bodhisattva.

I hope some of these references help some of you bring some multicultural influence to 2nd grade.

Aaron in Monterey