Cultures and Religions of the Himalayan Region

Summer 2004

Delmar Arnold
St. Anne's Day School
The Lives of the Buddha

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Jatakamala

Siddhartha Gautama

Mandala

Buddhist Temple

The Jatakamala: Early Lives and Prior Lessons

	Among the world's religions, people have three principle models for reaching the sacred: prophets, shamans, and sages. Like Moses or Mohammad, prophets are divinely inspired, and their personal experience of the divine often allows them to speak for their God to a larger community of faith. Shamans are men and women who enter trance states to communicate with supernatural beings-gods, demons, ghosts. Sages find a deepened insight into the nature of reality through ascetic and meditative practices. Prophets, shamans, and sages often have remarkable or supernatural experiences and they perform actions that create well-being for others. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was a person who embarked on a personal quest to understand the meaning of life. After much suffering, severe tests, and many trials, he achieved insight into the nature of reality through meditation. Once he attained enlightenment, he spent his life teaching others the path he followed to free himself from the cycle of life and death. While you might not think to group the Buddha with Odysseus or Spiderman, he shares with both the goal of relieving people of their suffering and restoring them to a state of real rather than illusory happiness and contentment.
Heroism Journal	We'll be talking about heroism as we read about the Buddha. Consider for a moment what makes a hero heroic. Think about someone from real life whom you consider to be a hero. In your journal, briefly tell her story and explain what makes her heroic. Do you think a religious leader can be a hero?
	To Buddhists, the life of Siddhartha Gautama, Shakyamuni Buddha, presents a path to achieve enlightenment and release from the endless cycle of suffering and rebirth. The Buddha's awakening let him see reality as it is beyond the confines of one life lived in this space and this time. In other words, his awakening released him from the cycle of endless reincarnation through the six realms of samsara. No longer trapped in one life at one time at one place, the Buddha came to understand the universe across the past and into the future. Thus Buddhists believe that the Buddha lived many previous lives before being reincarnated in the human world as Siddhartha Gautama and because of his enlightenment he lives many lives into the future. These lives are the result of and emblematic of his release from the cycle of karmic suffering.
Enlightenment Journal	Explain how you think people become enlightened and what they think and feel once they reach enlightenment. Can just anyone become enlightened? Does enlightenment depend on special circumstances--can it happen anywhere at anytime or do certain conditions need to be met? Are there different forms of enlightenment? Describe a moment of being enlightened from your own life or that someone has told you about.
	As you might imagine, there are many stories about the Buddha's life: his sorrows, his joys, and his enlightenment. Disciples wrote down the stories he told and the sermons he delivered. He told many stories, though, that you might not expect. He talked about his former lives, either as animals or people, and he told the stories as fables and parables. There are also wondrous and imaginary tales, paintings, and sculptures about lands far beyond our present comprehension where people, bodhisattvas and countless Buddhas from all epochs live. We'll be reading and looking at different versions of them.
Fables Myths Parables Journal	First, we'll begin with some familiar fables, myths, and parables. Read Aesop's fable of the ant and the grasshopper, Kipling's "Just So" story about how the camel got its hump, and Jesus' parable of the talents. As you read the selections, describe the features of each genre in your journal. We'll use your descriptions to develop a set of common definitions. Be prepared to discuss the tales and how fables, myths, and parables construct a story for a particular purpose and audience.
	The Jatakamala, or "Jataka Tales," is a collection of fables and parables from the Buddha's former lives when he lived on the earth as various animals or unenlightened people. The Buddha told stories from those lives to show people how they might live a thoughtful and compassionate life by relieving their own and other people's suffering. By now, you might have asked yourself: Why did the Buddha live his previous lives as animals and why does he tell stories about them? That's a question we need to answer, but we need to learn what Hindus and Buddhists believed about life, death, heaven, and hell in order to answer it intelligently.
Life Death Heaven Hell Journal	Before you look at what Buddhists have thought about life, death, heaven, and hell, consider for a moment what you think. First, write a short explanation of each idea. What is it? What is it like to experience it? What part of the life cycle does it occupy? Is it free, do you have to earn it, do you have to pay for it? After you've described what you believe, illustrate what you believe. Draw a circle that nearly fills a regular sheet of paper. Divide it into four to eight parts. Place life and death, heaven and hell or some aspect of each one in each section of the circle. Illustrate what's happening there. Be prepared to share and explain your illustration in class.
	A good way to begin to understand Buddhist beliefs is to look at the the "Panca Gandaka Cakra," or Wheel of Life. The Divyadana recounts that the Buddha, on hearing a monk discourse at great length about the nature of life, instructed him to teach people about karma by creating a picture of the path of existence. The monk created the "Panca Gandaka Cakra," a visual lesson which became the first mandala. The Wheel of Life is a detailed visual representation of the universe, the cycle of birth and death through the six realms of existence ranging from heaven to hell. According to Mahayana beliefs, no realm is without suffering and delusion. Beings migrate from one realm of existence to another. Yama, the God of the Dead, ceaselessly spins the wheel, moving each being from one life through death to his next life. Where beings begin a new life depends on the quality of their past lives and how much merit they have gained through good actions. Until a being is freed from samsara, its various actions move it around and around in the six realms. The Buddha's teachings offer a path to escape the wheel of samsara.
Wheel of Life Reading	Read the following selections from Words of My Perfect Teacher. To understand the workings of karma, actions and their effects, read pages 101-102. Read pages 72-73 to visit one of the six realms, the realm of the pretas, or hungry ghosts. Read pages 117-118 to learn positive actions that accrue merit. Learn about the Wheel of Life in one of the following three ways. Enlarge the Wheel of Life above and use this diagram to familiarize yourself with the different sections and symbols. To read a longer explanation, click here. To visit an interactive Internet introduction to the Wheel of Life, click here. Be sure you understand: karma, samsara, rebirth, the three cardinal faults, the six realms, and the twelve interdependent elements that cause misery.
	Now you have enough general background to begin to understand why the Buddha had previous lives and what value they might have for understanding his life and teachings. Jataka tales are stories that demonstrate various good actions that can lead to release from samsara. We'll begin by reading one tale together and several in groups. As you'll see from your copy of the "Katkkata-jataka," "The Crab Jataka," Jataka tales have a common format. Each tale is introduced with a short explanation of the time, place, and circumstances surrounding the telling of the story. The Buddha then proceeds to tell the story. The tale concludes with a verse proclaiming a moral precept. At the end, the Buddha explains the symbolism of the tale. Tomorrow we will read a traditional version of "The Crab Jataka" and a contemporary adaptation of The Rabbit and the Tigerdile. Afterwards, we will read several other Jataka tales in groups and present them to the class as one act plays.
Jataka Tales Reading	For homework, browse through the other Jataka tales from the Resource List. Pick three favorites. We'll form groups and choose tales to use for your project.
Jataka Tale Illustrated Manuscript Group Project	Your group project is to create a Tibetan style illustrated manuscript of eight or more pages. The aim of the project will be to teach third graders a moral story from the Jataka Tales. Use this link for a model to base your manuscript upon. Your project should satisfy the following requirements: 1) Your tale should have an illustrated title page, 2) it should contain six to eight pages of text, 3) even though an original page would be 4" x 26", your pages should be 4 ¼" x 11", 4) each page should have a uniform border and one or two illustrations, 5) illustrations should match the narrative, 6) narrative passages should average 50 to 100 words per page, 7) they should be well-written, carefully edited, and appropriate for a third grade reader, and finally 8) the manuscript should state the occasion, tale, verse, and symbolism. For extra credit: Make a posterboard or cardboard upper and lower cover for your jataka tale. You will find examples at www.asianart.com/exhibitions/covers/index.html.
Resources	Once the Buddha Was A Monkey: Arya Sura's Jatakamala. Translated by Peter Khoroche. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1989. The Rabbit and the Tigerdile. W. W. Rowe. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publishers, 1996. Stories of the Buddha. Translated by Caroline A.F. Rhys Davids. New York, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1989. Twenty Jataka Tales. Retold by Noor Inayat Khan. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 1985. Words of My Perfect Teacher. Patrul Rinpoche. Translated by Padmakara Translation Group. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1998. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/bps/leaves/bl135.html http://www.buddhistinformation.com/american_jataka_talesno_1.htm http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/budtale1.htm

This site was created by Delmar Arnold at the NEH Summer Institute "Cultures and Religions of the Himalayan Region," held at the College of the Holy Cross, Summer 2004