Discussion Themes: Buddhism, meditation, reincarnation
Discussion Questions:
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Would you sacrifice yourself for someone? Who?
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What do you think of the housekeeper? Where does she see herself status-wise relative to the painter? Is she subservient to him?
- Who was the cat? That is the big question in this book. Why did this cat act so differently from most cats? Why did it pray and act so quietly and politely?
- Is this a story within a story? Actually there are several stories within this story. How many can you identify?
- What did you like best about this story? What did you like least?
- Why did the man accept the cat when he clearly didn’t want it? What part of Buddhist philosophy was he practicing by accepting the cat?
- The story follows the life of Buddha on his path to enlightenment. What is enlightenment?
Suggested Activities and Food :
- Japanese tea ceremony
- Sweet treat and bitter green tea with chopsitcks
- Writing an extension to the story using another animal
We had a Japanese Tea Ceremony with small sweet cookies eaten with chopsticks. Green tea was poured by the hostess. The sweet taste combined with the slightly bitter taste of the green tea in the mouth at the same time was compared. The girls bowed in the right places, During the tea we discussed the concepts related to Buddhism and meditation. The girls tried both basic meditation positions, single lotus and double lotus.
After the tea ceremony they created their own Buddhist animal stories, They were about a fly, dragonfly, chicken, boar and rabbit. Each story was discussed as to whether it followed the Buddhist philosophy and what would need to change so it did. Then the girls recreated their stories to try to better match the Buddhist principles. This led to a lot of discussion on sacrifice and the concept of sacrificing yourself for someone else. They were pretty evenly divided with half willing to sacrifice themselves for others and half feeling that that wasted their life.
I think the most interesting part of the discussion was the housekeeper. She demonstrates that you can be humble and respectful without being subservient. The girls has a hard time with this concept at first but seemed to start to understand.
After the "meeting" the girls discussed changing the name of the club before entering middle school. There was a general concensus that it should change but no concensus at all on what the new name should be. They'll continue to work on that. They decided that a 2005 webpage would be blue, purple and green. The webmaster makes decisions beyond that.
Although this book got fairly low ratings by the girls, as the parent present I thought we actually had one of the best discussions andenjoyed the activities more than any other meeting at my house. Switching to where the girls have the meeting where they lead at their own house seems to work better. |
