It says, we know that in little children's development process, fairy tales is very important.
But at the same time, it creates an illusion for them.
What's your advice, and what would be good to teach them?
Yeah, I don't think the truth of a story is necessary for it to be useful, beneficial.
A story itself has to be, you have to ask the question, what good is a story itself?
Like if I tell you a true story or I tell you a story that never happened, I don't think that is a salient feature or an important feature of the story or the usefulness.
The question is, to what benefit are stories?
And you say that we know that fairy tales are very important.
And I'm going to cede to your knowledge on that.
It makes sense to me.
I don't have children personally, so I've never really thought about how stories benefit.
But you have to look more at the content of the story.
So if you tell a child a true story,
that corrupts them.
Tell them all about these horrible people and maybe even glorify it a little bit and talk about how some stories you read are just of no use, of no benefit to people.
whether they be true or not.
I'm thinking now of stories that aren't true, of novels and so on, that talk about the truth, actually.
And it's an interesting question.
So stories that...
are made up but are based on the way things actually go.
So they talk about corruption and they show people being corrupt and they show this as being the state of the world.
And so there's truth in that.
It's really talking about the true state.
People can go into slums and research and write a story about how horrible life there can be.
But the question of in what way and in what context and to what audience that's useful,
is something I think quite interesting and the most important question.
So I think it's generally understood that moral, stories with moral are very important, stories that teach you something.
But what I wanted to say about the point I was making about the stories about the horrors of life,
is I think stories that motivate are important.
Stories that encourage are important.
So if your story is just teaching us, like they talk about this catharsis, so a lot of Shakespearean stuff, right?
These stories that end just horribly, right?
And I can never understand it.
And I think I'm leaning towards a justification or a belief that these sort of stories are not justified, even for bringing about a catharsis, which of course is not a Buddhist concept, a purging of emotions, right?
So it's a relief to see such horrible things
Because to me it leads to despair and depression and the feeling that there is no way out, which a lot of stories do.
So stories that are, I think, encouraging,
These are important.
Now they have to of course encourage in the right way.
The other side is these fairy tale happily ever after stories which are probably equally harmful I would say to children.
The idea, you know, and this has been brought up, I think, in sociology circles or psychology circles, where they point to this as a real problem, where, for example, the princess waits for her prince.
And so this leads women to feel like they are just objects waiting to be plucked off of a tree or so on.
But in general, the idea that at the end of the story, Prince Charming or whatever, the man, the woman, the guy gets the girl, the girl gets the guy, and they live happily ever after.
This is also problematic because, you know, and stories like it that lead us closer to the wheel, lead us or remind us or encourage us or teach us.
the rightness of the wheel of samsara in terms of following the system, succeeding in life, meeting with all the trials and tribulations of life and conquering them by becoming a successful whatever.
or defeating the enemies and so on, leads people in the wrong direction.
So the question of which sort of stories are useful is a really interesting one.
Which stories as a Buddhist would you recommend?
So first of all, your question is about illusion.
I don't think the illusion is the problem.
The moral is the problem.
What the story is teaching is the problem, or is the question.
And so I think the answer from a Buddhist point of view is quite simple.
It's to teach, of course, Buddhist principles.
And this is what Christians do.
This is what all religions do.
They have fairy tales that teach certain morals in their religion.
And so, for example, the Jatakas are actually a really good tool for this.
I printed up some retellings of the Jatakas that are on the internet, the past life stories of the Buddha, and shared them or gave them to these novices and had them, we sat around and read them.
These Vietnamese, Cambodian, mostly Vietnamese and Cambodian kids
who ordained as novices for the summer.
These were pretty bad kids.
Some of them were gangsters.
Most of them were hooked on... Like most kids hooked on PS2 or whatever it was at the time.
I don't know.
They had this PlayStation...
I think that, yeah, they had a PlayStation.
So I ended up, they were all staying in this one room and just lying around playing PlayStation.
And so this is what they were doing as novices, which of course is not allowed, but you know, that's how it goes.
So in the beginning, it wasn't my monastery.
I was just a visitor.
And so for the first few days, I just let it be and said, it's not my business.
But after a while, it got horrible.
They were just lying around swearing and cursing.
really making a nuisance of themselves.
So I went into the kitchen and found the fuse box and turned off their electricity.
So that turned off all the fans and, of course, turned off their PlayStation.
And they were lying in the middle of summer in this basement room suffering all of a sudden.
Of course, they had no clue what had happened and they didn't know where the fuse box was.
So then it was a lot of fun.
And then I was able to really talk to them.
And I taught them these, or I read with them these jatakas,
It didn't have a big effect, I mean, but I think the, you know, because they weren't that interested and after a while, no, because other things had more of an effect.
It was much more hands-on.
I ended up taking them on a camping trip and...
We ended up turning from the Jatakas to the Majjhima Nikaya, the Bala Pandita Sutta, I think, because they were asking suddenly when, I think they read in one of the Jatakas about hell, and they were asking about hell.
And so, oh, then I got into the
As Larry, you were telling about being drawn and quartered.
Well, there's descriptions of what hell is like.
And drawn and quartered is actually pretty tame in comparison with some of the tortures that they talk about in the Majjhima Nikaya.
And so this really hit the gangster kids.
There were these two gangster kids who really, really were moved by the whole experience of ordaining and my torturing them with these stories and then talking about ghosts in the monastery and so on.
Because I was just relating other people telling me ghost stories that
They had seen ghosts in the monastery.
So one night I was telling them what I had heard with the intent to really freak them out because they really needed to be freaked out.
And then in the morning, the abbot came down and scolded me and said, were you telling them ghost stories last night?
I said, yeah, I was just telling them what I'd heard.
He said, well, last night, you know, I had 10 novices come to my room and refused to sleep anywhere, refused to leave and ended up sleeping on his floor, the floor in his room.
So I think that's good examples.
I mean, ghost stories can work for certain kids.
I mean, these were kids who really had no... Many of them, anyway.
Some of them were good.
Many of them had no strong parental guidance.
And so it was necessary to shock them with things like that.
But I think for good kids, man, the Jatakas can be a wonderful...
experience it's a shame that most of them are still not well they're still mostly not translated they're translated in old old English which kids would not understand but there are some retelling retold jatakas which are lots of fun
and I think would be really good for kids.
I gave them to my brothers once.
I was kind of in my proselytizing phase.
I was new to Buddhism and I wanted everyone to become Buddhists, so I gave them away.
I printed them up and gave them to my brothers.
I don't think they ever read them.
But I would recommend the Jatakas specifically, that if you want to tell fairy tales.
Another good thing is on the internet there's this one guy on YouTube
who actually has some of the Jatakas in cartoon form.
I don't know where he got them, whether he made them or not, but it looks like he's making or someone's making in India
all sorts of cartoons, mostly Hindu, but some Buddhist.
So if you look up Jataka on YouTube, I bet you'll find his stuff and you'll probably find some other stuff.
And get the book, this book off BuddhaNet, and print it up and read the Jatakas to your kids.
Read these stories to your kids, because they're wonderful.
Some of them are just excellent.
If I had been read this stuff when I was a kid, I can't imagine how different my life would have been.
to have this kind of moral teaching and to have heard something so beautiful and so pure.
Because that's really what's lacking in most of our fairy tales and our stories and our entertainment.
People nowadays can put together brilliant entertainment, but don't think to put a moral in the movie, or the book, or the story.
Disney did some good stuff, I think, later on.
The early stuff was probably pretty horrible.
It was pretty horrible for morals.
But I don't know.
I mean, I haven't watched Disney in a long time.
But, you know, Mulan, I think, that was kind of, you know, I mean, not in a Buddhist sense, but it was good for, that was a good one for, you know, seeing the equality of gender equality.
I'm trying to think now.
I know Disney got better.
I think they did eventually have, you know, like, what is it, Lion King?
Not totally Buddhist, but some idea of letting go, right?
Letting go of the past.
That one scene where he's told to let go of the past.
Because he says, yeah, yeah, I don't want to go back because of how bad the past was.
And this monkey hits him in the head.
And he says, oh, that hurts.
He says, what?
What do you mean it hurts?
It's in the past or something.
Oh, no.
I'm getting it all mixed up.
He says, I don't want to go back to the past.
That's what he's saying.
It's an interesting, it's actually a weird lesson, isn't it?
So he's given up the past.
He says, I don't want to deal with the past.
I don't want to worry about it.
And then he hits him.
And he says, what?
It's in the past.
And then he realizes, ah, the past is important, which is weird.
It's not really Buddhist.
Anyway.
I just mean to give examples of stories that do have morals, whether they're Buddhist morals or not.
But for the most part, look at all of these fairy tales.
We did a project in high school on nursery rhymes and fairy tales.
And they're really weird.
Like Humpty Dumpty, for example.
Little Jack Horner.
Little Jack Horner, I think, is actually supposed to have stolen this deed or something.
I mean, these weren't actually children's stories.
Georgie Porgy, I mean, what are these things?
This is the kind of stuff that kids like because it's kind of naughty.
And what is this rockabye baby on the treetops?
I mean, horrific.
horrific stuff it's just useless and meaningless so supplanting this with some really cool Buddhist stuff would be great so recommend the Jatakas