Buddhist Animal Wisdom Stories

by Mark W. McGinnis

Around the beginning of the common era, Indian Buddhists began to collect fables, or jataka tales, illuminating various human virtues and foibles—from kindness, cooperation, loyalty and self-discipline on the one hand to greed, pride, foolishness, and treachery on the other. Instead of populating these stories with people, they cast the animals of their immediate environment in the leading roles—which may have given the tales a universal appeal that helped them travel around the world, surfacing in the Middle East as Aesop's fables and in various other guises throughout East and Southeast Asia, Africa, Russia, and Europe.

Author and painter Mark McGinnis has collected over forty of these hallowed popular tales and retold them in vividly poetic yet accessible language, their original Buddhist messages firmly intact. Each story is accompanied with a beautifully rendered full-color painting, making this an equally attractive book for children and adults, whether Buddhist or not, who love fine stories about their fellow wise (and foolish) creatures.

Genres: Buddhism, Childrens, Audiobook, Animals

112 pages, Hardcover

First published November 9, 2004

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is exceptionally good for bed-time stories. The animal antics come surrounded with a context of compassion -- for foolishness, greed, pride, even cruelty. Animals of all these common addictions are on the way to awareness, realizing how stupid they've been. The comedy is more refreshing and thought provoking than Aesop's Fables. McGinnis gives a plain, transparent rendition of these ancient Buddhist tales, and his artwork is good enough to hang on the wall.

[Private Account · Rating 2 out of 5]

My almost-seven-year-old enjoyed this book. And I enjoyed the conversations we got to have about why I disagreed with many of the stories.

I give this book two stars because only about half the stories taught actual Buddhist values like never asserting your own needs, not valuing yourself or your life, and doing your best to enjoy suffering and starving so that others may not suffer or starve. And being vegetarian. The other half of the stories were no different from Aesop's fables or any other folk tales that illuminate tricky human behavior in entertaining ways with messages like not following the herd, not falling for flattery, etc.

[Ga · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice little book for kids.
Collection of short stories in an Aesops Fables type vibe, but teaching Buddhist ideas.
Nice and simple for kids to understand.
Audiobook has nice narration.

[Florence🏳️‍🌈 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bedtime-storyesque

[Nayan S Patel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great 5 minute bedtime stories with lessons and morals.

Good read and good amount of stories. Easy to read and understandable and explain to kids. My kids love the pictures.

[Vibhu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful assortment

[Readsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, would give it as a holiday gift to all ages. Takes me back in time to the magic of childhood and the world which seems to be disappearing.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all this was a book that didn't come to me naturally if you would call that sweet step of perusing some shelves then having a book jump out of you. No strangely enough this book's interest was sparked in me by the vintage "The Cat Who Went To Heaven", which made mention of some Jataka stories as the author becomes a part of each animal that arrived to say farewell to Buddha.

Reading this I cannon say whether this may be considered actual Jataka tales or not since some of the stories rather seemed more based on Aesop's Fables (or could it be the other way around?) while the emphasis on Buddha's past lives weren't strongly touched upon.

The stories were short and easy to read while I enjoyed the moral tales they had to offer. Some most definitely stood out to me as I am facing my own monkey such as the buffalo did but my response so far has been a failure when you read about his wisdom.

And the other thing that caught my eye with this particular book is the beautiful artwork. It is amazing, bright and full of details while each story has a picture showing an important scene.

Just love this introduction and may have to see if they really did come out with a 2nd volume. If they did then it will be going on my wishlist while I am hoping it kept a similar formatting as this one did.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Monkeys pull up the roots of plants to figure out how to water them. Gardeners should not put monkeys in charge of watering plants.