How to Raise a Little Bodhisattva

In Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan, Natasha Heller, an associate professor of Chinese Buddhism, examines Taiwanese Buddhist picture books created to explicitly teach—or implicitly convey—Buddhism to a new generation of children. I happen to know that Heller is a parent. Whether or not she is a Buddhist practitioner, her work shows a clear sensitivity to the concerns of Buddhist parents. Though Literature for Little Bodhisattvas is a scholarly study, it also speaks to all Buddhist parents around the world.

Literature for Little Bodhisattvas: Making Buddhist Families in Modern Taiwan
By Natasha Heller
University of Hawaii Press, 2025, 258 pp., $75.00, hardcover

Every generation of Buddhists faces the challenge of sharing or conveying Buddhism to the next, if they so choose. What’s surprising is how few resources exist to support that effort. This is especially true in the West. Some years ago, scholar Vanessa Sasson and I conducted an exhaustive literature review and found that these resources barely existed before the 21st century.

This scarcity of literature holds true in Asia as well. Perhaps that’s inevitable, given the example of the Buddha, who famously walked out on his own family (not exactly a ringing endorsement of parental responsibility). Still, the myths tell us that bhikkhus and bhikkhunis were called “sons and daughters of the Buddha,” and his biological son, Rahula, was among them from an early age. So contemporary Buddhists shouldn’t feel entirely discouraged from trying to share their Buddhism with their children or help foster a new Buddhism in them.

For all its faults, the 21st century has at least blessed us in the West with a new wave of books to help us in those efforts. (Personally, I think first of Jon J Muth’s beautiful titles from the 2000s.) But this literary revival isn’t limited to countries where Buddhism’s minority status puts added pressure on parents to pass along Buddhist teachings and practices. It’s also unfolding in majority-Buddhist nations across Asia. Literature for Little Bodhisattvas surveys one such emergence.

Heller focuses on picture books in part because their use intriguingly echoes the material use of sutras. After listing what sutras require of owners and readers, she writes, “A list of ‘what a picture book wants’ would include listening, reading, holding, viewing, touching, and sharing.” It’s a striking parallel to what a sutra wants! And several of these actions—indeed, all of them when very young children are involved—are inherently interpersonal. They require the participation of elders, usually parents. In this way, picture books become a form of family religion—not simply religious parenting or children’s religion but a rich, mutually shaping interaction between at least two generations.

Heller goes further in emphasizing the importance of picture books. She writes, “modern family Buddhism in Taiwan is constituted through literature for families, treating the home as the primary site for religious formation through a process of iterative learning.” These books, then, become the material form of modern family Buddhism, giving rise to new practices rooted not in the temple but in the home. In a nation where Buddhism remains the overwhelmingly favored religion, this shift matters a great deal.

Every generation of Buddhists faces the challenge of sharing or conveying Buddhism to the next, if they so choose.

An important note on “iterative learning”: This refers not to step-by-step instructions but to a “looping process of returning to stories and themes,” something that many parents will recognize as perfectly suited to the unique dynamic between themselves, their children, and a picture book. Of course, they may also recognize that the ideal nature of this arrangement tends to fade after the fiftieth repetition or so.

Heller focuses primarily on literature produced by three major Taiwanese Buddhist organizations: Fo Guang Shan, Dharma Drum, and Tzu Chi. Each has its own orientation, and the values of each are reflected in the character of the books they publish. This review can’t capture the full range of these works or the ways they embody and extend their publishers’ missions, but it can offer one example for each organization.

Chapter two examines Picturebook Heart Sutra by Xingyun (1927–2023), the founder of Fo Guang Shan (Buddha Light Mountain) and perhaps the most prominent figure in the humanistic Buddhism movement. As its title suggests, this book positions itself within the commentarial tradition on the Heart Sutra, a broad tradition, given how terse and abstract the sutra is, and how much commentary is typically needed to bring it to life for practitioners. Xingyun draws on traditional and personal stories to do just that, particularly for young readers. One edition of the book is part of a series exploring classics from Kongzi (Confucius, and thus Confucianism) and Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu, and thus Daoism). In this way, the book invites readers into the narrative and conceptual world of Buddhism provisionally, with deeper study envisioned later. Here we see the model of iterative learning in action.

Chapter four turns to stories of “naughty little monks.” One centers on the childhood of Master Shengyan, founder of the Dharma Drum organization, in Master Shengyan’s Naughty Youth. The young Shengyan isn’t portrayed as a miniature enlightened master but as a real child with recognizably childish traits. These qualities persist into adulthood, transformed into the playful (but not immature) characteristics that animate a Chan master’s teaching. Heller also looks at stories about the Buddha’s son, Rahula, and the progressive Japanese Zen monk Ikkyū in the picture book series Code Words of the Great Teachers. Far from idealizing their subjects, these books highlight youthful misbehavior, allowing children to connect their self-perception with those of revered Buddhist figures—precisely through shared naughtiness. Such books offer lessons for children and adults alike.

This book will capture your attention and make you think again about picture books in your past.

Chapter seven explores several books from the Tzu Chi Foundation, a Buddhist-based organization best known for its large-scale relief work, often conducted outside an explicitly Buddhist frame. In keeping with this focus, Tzu Chi’s picture books don’t attempt to explain science through Buddhism or cast Buddhist ideas as scientific. Instead, they present scientific topics—such as the relationship between coal and trees, the symbiosis of rhinos and birds, living with dust mites, vegetarianism, and water conservation—as worthwhile in their own right. That these align with Buddhist values goes unspoken; the point is to promote the practices themselves. In this way, Tzu Chi aims to help raise a generation that embodies Buddhist values, perhaps without even realizing it.

This review can present only a glimpse of the richness of Heller’s book, let alone of the literature itself. Still, I hope it conveys something of the creativity and variety found in these works. Literature for Little Bodhisattvas opens a window onto a world of family Buddhism, supported by picture books that reflect children’s experiences and gently channel them into Buddhist pathways (even if those aren’t literally labeled as such). I think this is a good thing. The future of Buddhism—and young Buddhists in Taiwan—may well depend on books like these. I also think it’s good because it’s a form of what Heller calls “affinity work”: “Efforts within the noninstitutional space of the home to create and foster ties to Buddhist people, institutions, ideas, and practices so that later encounters feel natural or fated.” Surely this is the work Buddhist parents are called to do.

I would have liked to see Heller engage more directly with broader dynamics in contemporary Buddhism, such as how Buddhists in Asia are responding to secularism, or how converts in the West navigate transmitting the dharma to their children. But Heller keeps her focus on Taiwan (she barely even mentions the looming presence of the People’s Republic of China).

Still, though I wish Heller had addressed this wider reality, she does provide us with tools to do so, ourselves. Whether you are a Buddhist parent, a Buddhist scholar, or both, this book will capture your attention and make you think again about picture books in your past. Perhaps, like me, you will even walk to your child’s old bedroom, take out a few treasured volumes, and read them aloud to yourself. Heller is right: Iterative learning and affinity work do not end.