The Twenty-Four Carat Buddha and Other Fables: Stories of Self-Discovery

Abstract

These are indeed stories of self-discovery, thought-provoking tales as the quotation on the back cover claims. The author gives her sense of the stories' purpose when she speaks in the introduction of our attempts to make sense of our lives, to solve problems, or to resolve old hurts. These are twenty-four therapeutic stories--good ones, to judge by the first five and the title-story. For those who want to go beyond the story or to dig deeper into it, there is a commentary and a set of questions for each story. The first story speaks of the diver who is told to wait to leap off the high cliffs until his instructor tells him to. Finally he does it on his own, and the instructor rejoices, saying that he needed the student to express his own belief in himself. Just One String (7) tells of the girl who has lost her family, her village, and the tapestry she had sewn narrating her life. She has been able to save only one thread from it. Her sorceress aunt gets the one thread to tell the whole story of the girl's life. Gold and Silver are two nieces to whom Queen Isadora entrusts her lovely garden. The two love the garden, one by protecting it and the other by enjoying it. Inktomi the spider tries several ways to become the most beautiful creature on earth, in fact consuming himself in flames in the last attempt. A chipmunk laments the loss of Inktomi's beautiful underbelly, which the chipmunk had found among the most beautiful things on earth. The twenty-four carat buddha is a foolish purchase by an American tourist in Bangkok. She buys it from an obvious and self-confessed seller of fake antiques--after he admits the false character of his street wares and takes her to his family's old antique store. She pays $500 for a jade buddha that is probably worth considerably less.