Week 14 Reading Notes: I lied, this is the real final post of the semester!

And here I am going back in time to week 14 to finish the semester.

I wanted to take this last post to go back over the Jataka Tales and why I think they are so important. Every culture has their own stories they tell children. Some more than others are more direct on the messages they're trying to send, but to me, it makes it better that these are so direct. When we want to be able to raise someone with the right values or ethics, it's important to start getting that across to them early. Compare the tales to that on the old lady who swallowed a fly that some of us grew up with. Where swallowing a fly, then other things to cover the last thing swallowed leads us to see that you cant just keep using something to take care of the next thing. At some point we need to stop and hit a stable point instead of digging a deeper hole for ourselves. It can be hard to understand that for someone younger reading. In these tales I read in class, it's very deliberate on how blunt the message is. If it's telling you not to lie, someone explicitly lies and is punished. If it tells you to respect people, the characters respect someone and so on. I think these tales are amazingly entertaining as well as getting across a clear message, so for anyone who hasn't had a chance to read any more of them, I highly highly suggest it.

From: My own reading over all the tales that can be found sprinkled throughout here by many authors.

If you Give a Mouse a Cookie