Jatakas are a collection of 547 stories that tell tales of loyalty, compassion, self-sacrifice and insight. They can be looked as moral stories. Many of the stories involve animals to illustrate the point. The tales are a great teaching tool for all ages. My kids fell in love with one book that had short stories but really drove the point of the story home. Jataka Tales are excellent meditative tools too.

Here is an example of one of the shorter Tales:

The greedy crow
Once upon a time there was a fine pigeon who used to live on a nest close to a kitchen. The cooks of the kitchen used to like her very much and often used to feed her grain. She liked the place and her life was fine. One day a crow saw the pigeon and saw how it was getting wonderful food from the kitchen. Then one day she made friends with the pigeon, and under the pretext of friendship,she somehow made the pigeon to share the nest with the crow. The pigeon then told her that they could spend time together discussing politics,religion etc but when it came to food both had their own ways. So she suggested the crow to search for her own food. But the crow was impatient and the very reason she had made friends with the pigeon was for the food. The crow wanted meat and all the pigeon got was grains from the kitchen.

It could not wait any longer and ultimately decided that she visit the kitchen directly for the food. Thinking so it stealthily crept down the chimney into the kitchen. She got the smell of a fish being curried on the pan. She got greedy and went ahead and tried to get the fish. But in the process she disturbed a ladle, and created a noise. This alerted the cook who was in the neighbouring room and he caught hold of the crow and killed it.

Moral: Greed Numbs intelligence.

Yes it seems short but the moral to the store is one everyone needs to learn. Greed, in the end, will only get you hurt or killed.

There are several sites on the Internet that offer many tales. Here are some of my favorites:

The Illustated Jataka and Other Stories of the Buddha

jatakKatha.com – This site is geared more towards kids but it good.

The Jataka Tales

Of course, there are many many books available at libraries. These are a 3 of my favorites. The first one is one my kids fell in love with after getting it from the library. I invested in a copy of our own.