My personal thoughts on Jataka:

It may(?) impart some good values and have limited
usefulness for teaching kids rudimentary principles of
morality. But then you can say the same of the quoran
or the bible. If it were my own children or if I was
in charge of educating children, I would not let them
read Jataka, the bible, or quoran, until they had
developed enough wisdom to discern useful principles
of truth from rubbish. For that matter, I even ban
myself from reading the Jataka because it has so many
ambiguous and unclear messages. I.e. people with
insufficient wisdom can very easily misinterpret
unclear messages from spiritual teachings and as a
result cause great harm to themselves and others.

-fk


--- Ong Yong Peng <ypong001@...> wrote:

> Dear Robert and friends,
>
> thanks, would you kindly share with us your findings
> on the study of
> the Tipitaka relating to the Jataka. These are my
> personal thoughts:
>
> I feel that the Jataka is an integrated part of the
> Theravada
> tradition. It is very much a part of the Mahayana
> tradition too. It
> is possible that the Jataka tales can be traced back
> all the way to
> Buddha's time. The stories are interesting and
> encoded with morals
> for the living. Being ignorant of the entire Jataka,
> I think it stop
> short of encouraging the practice of the training of
> the mind.
> Nevertheless, it is a good way of imparting children
> with good
> values, and is good for light reading too. The
> Jataka is a unique
> form of literature different from the four Nikayas.
> I have read that
> these tales are actually Indian folk tales modified
> such that the
> Buddha become the hero of the story. However, I have
> yet to know of
> any Indian folk tales that are similar to a Jataka
> story. What do you
> think? There are several places in the Nikayas where
> the Buddha
> related his past lives. Do you think the Buddha did
> tell the Jataka
> stories? The Jataka stories carries profound
> Buddhist ideas such as
> Kamma and Rebirth. Each book in the Kuddakha Nikaya
> takes a unique
> literature format, and Jataka is no exception. How
> does this affect
> its position within the entire Pali canon? Would an
> increased
> emphasis of Jataka results in a paradigm shift from
> the Vipassana
> practice in the Theravada tradition? Does the Jataka
> play a part in
> the emergence of the Mahayana tradition?
>
> metta,
> Yong Peng.
>
> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, rjkjp1 wrote:
> My studies of the Tipitaka confirm that the Jataka
> is part of it. The
> commentaries to the Jataka are also associated with
> it and are an
> ancient part of the Theravada tradition. I find the
> Jataka deep in
> meaning.
>
>

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