Tales of the Buddha Former Lives Stories 1 to 50 Edited by Esther Thien

I am very glad that I have taken this book, Tales of the Buddha Former Lives Stories, home from Bright Hill Temple.


Tales of the Buddha Former Lives Stories is one of the free books I collected when I visited Bright Hill Temple in Singapore. If you like to read this book, you can download the free book from http://www.kmspks.org/download/index.htm

While Tales of the Buddha Former Lives Stories is meant as a children story book, I enjoy reading it since as an adult, I can better appreciate the wisdom of the stories.

There is one particular story about a gentle and mild elephant named Ladyface. This elephant overheard the scheming of the robbers and learnt violence from the conversation of those robbers. The wise minister of the king mentioned that the only way to make Ladyface mild was to ask a few wise men to speak about wisdom.

This story shows that bad association can spoilt virtues. Since most of us want to belong and want the warm friendship, we must learn to choose our friends well.

In another story about two stupid children, the moral of the story is that a wise enemy is less dangerous than foolish friends.

Both children killed their parents due to extreme stupidity. One child killed his father because he used an axe to kill the mosquito on the head of his father. The mosquito died and so did his father. Another child killed her mother in similar manner.

The adviser who witnessed both acts of stupidity commented, “with friends like these, who needs enemies?”

I think this advice is useful for people of old age. Love, loyalty and friendship do not guarantee that the person is wise. Sometimes, it is better to hire outsiders to provide advice than to ask our incompetent friends to help us.

All the stories in the Tales of the Buddha Former Lives have at least one moral. It is surprising that many adults do not even heed the moral of the story.

A few stories dealt with love, and the moral of the stories is: Infatuation leads to destruction.

In the story of the mountain buck and village doe. The mountain buck is blind with love for the village doe. In the end, the hunter kills the mountain buck. The wise fairy said, “It was the excitement of infatuation that killed this foolish deer. Such blind desire brings false happiness at first, but ends in pain and suffering.”

While some people say that love is blind. That is true for foolish people. True love is never blind. True love means to see the other person as what he or she is, and to love his personality while helping him to overcome his weakness.

It is good that children learnt about romantic love from a young age, so that they do not become blind by infatuation, and killed by silliness.

Tales of the Buddha Former Lives Stories 1 to 50 Edited by Esther Thien is one of the best books for children and adults to learn the simple truth.

Tales of the Buddha Former LivesStories 1 to 50 Edited by Esther Thien is one of the best books to remind us of right and wrong.