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

The Twenty-Four Carat Buddha is a collection of original fairy tales set in imaginary space and time but with a piercing relevance for modern life. Each story follows a hero or heroine on a quest of self-discovery, a quest that sometimes ends with a new challenge, sometimes with a hopeful awakening, and sometimes with a painful and unanticipated realization. Like many fables, each story tries to share a lesson about living life in a complicated and busy world. But also, like many fairy tales, each story can be enjoyed and appreciated even if its particular message does not strike a relevant chord. The stories explore themes with relevance to all of us: coming of age and learning to trust in our own judgment and intuition; dealing with experiences of profound loss; coming to terms with the demons of past abuses and traumas; and confronting the choices that we all must make as we try to figure out how to live a meaningful life. Although the fables are easy reading, the themes they deal with resonate at the deepest spiritual and philosophical levels of the soul. Accompanying the stories themselves are a collection of reflections and a series of questions that allow the reader to explore the message of each story in greater depth. Readers who want to use the fables as a vehicle for self-exploration can choose to use these sections of the book, while those who prefer their stories unfiltered can ignore the more self-help focused parts of the collection. Because of the universality of the themes covered and the easy, engaging style of the stories, The Twenty-Four Carat Buddha will appeal to the child looking for a bedtime story, the adolescent struggling with a multiplicity of choices, and the adult taking a moment to reflect on his or her life