The Jatakas

A hare with nothing to give a hungry traveller shakes the insects from his fur so that nothing will burn with him, and leaps into the fire to make his own body the meal. The hare is the Buddha, hundreds of lives before he became the Buddha, and that is the engine of the whole collection: every animal, bandit, merchant and tree spirit in these five hundred and forty-seven tales is one rung on a single climb toward waking.