Fake Buddha Quotes

Little known fact: the words “A Fake Buddha Quote all ’bout truth” were originally in Alanis Morissette’s song “Ironic,” but she took them out when she realized that this actually was an example of irony, unlike most of the other images in the song.

No, that’s not true.

But isn’t it ironic?

This one has its origins in the first translated Buddhist text I ever read: Juan Mascaró’s translation of the Dhammapada for Penguin Classics. I was deeply impressed by this at the time, although now I realize that Mascaró, like other Hindu translators of the Dhammapada, seriously misrepresented what some key passages say.

But that’s a story for another day. Here we’re not talking about the translation, since these words are from Mascaró’s introduction. On page 21 of my edition we find:

“Love is beauty and beauty is truth, and this is why in the beauty of a flower we can see the truth of the universe.” (Note that we have here “this is why” and not the “that is why” of the quote in the image above.)

The fact that Mascaró makes an abrupt transition from these words to “This is how the Buddha speaks of love in the Majjhima Nikaya” (a Buddhist text) and has “From the Samyutta and Digha Nikaya” (two more Buddhist texts) immediately before them may have mislead some people into thinking that those references pertained to the quote in question. Which of course they don’t.

These are Mascaró’s own words, and they are a mashup of Keats’ “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” from his “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and the general idea of Tennyson’s poem, “Flower in the Crannied Wall.”

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

Although I believe that Tennyson borrowed this from Blake’s Auguries of Innocence, written much earlier than “Flower in the Crannied Wall” but published in the same year:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand.
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand.
And Eternity in an hour.

There’s a similar Fake Buddha Quote, “If we could understand a single flower we could understand the whole universe” which comes to us from Borges, and which I discuss here.

The language of “Love is beauty and beauty is truth, and that [or this] is why in the beauty of a flower we can see the truth of the universe” is completely different from anything found in the Buddhist texts. But those who are unacquainted with the scriptures couldn’t be expected to know that.

Jeremy O’Kelley contacted me this morning about the following quote:

If you let cloudy water settle
It will become clear
If you let your upset mind settle
Your course will also become clear

This was one I’d never seen before, although I’m very familiar with the image, which is very popular among meditation teachers. In fact in teaching young children about mindfulness it’s common to get them to make a jar filled with glitter. When the jar is shaken up then you see a lot of swirling bits of shiny plastic. Just let the jar sit for a while, and the water naturally clears.

This represents how our turbulent thoughts will settle down and the mind will clear if we simply sit and refrain from stirring up the waters of the mind. It’s a great teaching tool and a wonderful metaphor.

I also recognize the image as canonical. There’s a well-known sutta in the Samyutta Nikaya where the Buddha uses metaphors for the five hindrances, which are sense desire, ill will, laziness and tiredness, worry and restlessness, and doubt. The five hindrances are in fact a remarkably complete inventory of the kinds of distraction we experience both on and off the meditation cushion.

The Samyutta Nikaya passage says that sense desire is like water tainted with dye, ill will is like boiling water, laziness/sleepiness is like “water covered over with slimy moss and water-plants” (i.e. stagnant water), worry/restlessness is like water whipped by the wind, and doubt is like “water, agitated, stirred up muddied, put in a dark place.”

Here, in full, is the passage on doubt:

Again, Brahman, when a man dwells with his heart possessed and overwhelmed by doubt-and-wavering, and does not know, as it really is, the way of escape from doubt-and-wavering that has arisen, then he cannot know or see, as it really is, what is to his own profit, nor can he know and see what is to the profit of others, or of both himself and others. Then even sacred words he has long studied are not clear to him, not to mention those he has not studied.

“Imagine a bowl of water, agitated, stirred up muddied, put in a dark place. If a man with good eyesight were to look at the reflection of his own face in it, he would not know or see it as it really was. In the same way, Brahman, when a man dwells with his heart possessed and overwhelmed by doubt-and-wavering that has arisen, then he cannot know or see, as it really is, what is to his own profit, to the profit of others, to the profit of both. Then even sacred words he has long studied are not clear to him, not to mention those he has studied.

Doubt in this sense is not honest skepticism, where we’re not sure what the truth is and are making a good-faith effort to determine it through questioning. It’s more a state of confusion and of low confidence. Clinical depression is a good example of extreme doubt. When we’re depressed the mind lies to us. It tell us that we’re useless (making us forget our accomplishments), that no one cares about us (causing us to ignore the many instances where people have expressed love and concern for us), and tells us that we’ll never be happy again (even though we have ample experience of unpleasant mental states having previously arisen and passed away). Doubt is a liar. It does the opposite to seeking the truth.

In this sutta the Buddha is talking about doubt regarding teachings or practices. The Brahmin who questions him is asking about why sometimes he is unable to make sense of the “mantras.” Here too, doubt lies. We can find ourselves believing, for example, that meditation doesn’t work, or that we can’t meditate. In that state of unclarity we are unable to recall instances where we’ve felt happier after meditating, and lose faith that we’ve changed as a result of our practice, even though we’ve noted that fact many times before. Our ability to see our practice, ourselves, and our memories is obscured, just as our vision is obscured by muddy water.

The quote in question is from page 119 of Jack Kornfield’s “Buddha’s Little Instruction Book,” the title of which has led many people to assume it’s a book of scriptural quotations. Actually it’s Jack’s own adaptations and distillations of wisdom from various traditions.

In turn it seems to be based on a saying in chapter 15 of the Tao Te Ching, where in Mitchell’s translation is in the form:

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

So this is apparently a contemporary Buddhist’s recasting of a Daoist saying, rather than something the Buddha taught. That doesn’t call the wisdom of the quote into question, of course. It just means we shouldn’t call it a quote from the Buddha.

This, like “The price of freedom is simply choosing to be,” which I discuss here, comes from an article called “The Four Elements of True Love According to Buddha.” And, like “The price of freedom is simply choosing to be,” this quote is falsely attributed.

In fact, of the five quotes in the “Four Elements” article said to be by the Buddha, four are fake. This provides more evidence for my theory that some people are preferentially drawn to fake quotes.

The idea that the Buddha would talk about an “innermost soul” is hilarious. Despite this, it’s wildly attributed to him on the internet.

It’s also attributed to “Tea Rose” — for example in the 2007 book by Varla Ventura, “Wild Women Talk About Love,” where the attribution is “Tea Rose, generous wild woman.” Unfortunately the book says nothing about who this “Tea Rose” is, and I haven’t been able to find any information about her. I’ve contacted (or as people like to say these days, “reached out to”) Ventura to see if she can offer information about Tea Rose’s identity.

Incidentally I’ve seen this quote both with “innermost” (correct) and “inner most” (incorrect).

[Tip of the hat to Jonathan Chalmers, who passed this quote on, and who was rightly suspicious of the others in the article.]

I found this one in an article on intimate relationships and the Buddhist teaching of the “four Immeasurables” or “Divine Abidings.”

I also found it elsewhere in an expanded form: “The price of freedom is simply choosing to be; liberation is in the mind.” It’s widely attribute to the Buddha.

This is absolutely not something from the Buddhist scriptures, although I haven’t yet found the original source. I’ve seen several places where is’t presented without attribution, but accompanying an image of the Buddha. It’s possible that someone made the leap to assuming that the Buddha was therefore the author of the quote.

This one was just passed on to me, and is also found as:

• “Life is so very difficult. How can we be anything but kind?”
• “Life is so very difficult, how can we be anything other than kind?”

The version that I’ve used as the heading for this article is perhaps the definitive version of this quote, while the rest are later variants. The original is from Jack Kornfield’s “Buddha’s Little Instruction Book,” which is, as I’ve explained here many times, not a book of quotes from the Buddha but of adaptations and distillations of teachings, some canonical and some not.

The message of “Life is so hard, how can we be anything but kind?” is in fact very Buddhist, although I’m not aware of any scriptural quotes that come anything close to saying this.

There is the following, which is from the Pali Dhammapada (verse 129): “All tremble at violence; all fear death. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.”

There’s also “‘As I am, so are these. As are these, so am I.’ Drawing the parallel to yourself, neither kill nor get others to kill,” which is from the Sutta Nipata.

Those both convey the sense that others suffer just as we do, and so we should therefore not cause suffering.

These aren’t very close parallels, and I suspect that Kornfield wasn’t paraphrasing any specific text but creating a statement that be understood to reflect the gist of the Buddhist teachings.

Incidentally, one of my own sayings is, “Life is short; be kind,” which isn’t that different from Kornfield’s saying.

When this was first passed on to me I thought it was probably from Thomas Byrom’s version of the Dhammapada. He’s fond of short, declarative sentences (in this case “look within” and “be still”) and he tends to be poetic (“know the sweet joy of the way”). Unfortunately, his Dhammapada and the original text often bear little to no resemblance to each other.

And my guess was right. This is Byrom’s attempt at Dhammapada verse 205.

In Buddharakkhita’s translation this verse is:

Having savored the taste of solitude and peace (of Nibbana), pain-free and stainless he becomes, drinking deep the taste of the bliss of the Truth.

I’d put it a little differently (and I think more literally):

Having drunk the nectar of solitude and of tranquility,
[And] drinking the nectar of the joy of truth, he becomes free from sorrow, free from evil.

The verse starts with the phrase Pavivekarasaṃ pītvā of which pitvā is a gerund, “having drunk.” “Pavivekarasaṃ” is an accusative noun, and it breaks down into paviveka (solitude) and rasa, which can mean taste, juice and a few related concepts. Since we talk of drinking a liquid and not drinking a taste, I thought that “nectar” worked better for rasa than Buddharakkhita’s “taste.” There is of course legitimate leeway in creating any translation, however.

Byrom, however, goes well beyond legitimate leeway. There is nothing corresponding to “look within” in this verse. And it opens by talking about what happens once we have drunk the nectar of solitude. Byrom renders this as an imperative, “Be still.” This is simply not what the passage is saying.

And although the Buddha does talk a lot about “attachment,” that concept is not mentioned in this verse. Byrom has simply thrown it in.

As usual he’s essentially just making it up as he goes along. He produces a sense that is emotionally much warmer than the actual Dhammapada. Contrast the intimacy of having someone tell you (presumably in a kind way) “Be still” with the much more distant and abstract “Having drunk the nectar of solitude.” Now Byrom’s version (like the publisher, Shambhala, I don’t call it a “translation”) is very popular because of its warmth and gentleness. But the fact is that the Dhammapada has, for the most part, a rather austere and ascetic tone, and to soften this is to distort the text.

Critiquing Byrom is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel (admittedly I’ve never attempted that sport — I suspect it’s more difficult than it’s reputed to be). Virtually the whole of his rendering is a mistranslation, much of it much worse than this. Here at last he doesn’t introduce any non-Buddhist concepts, which he does elsewhere.

This is fake. It’s from Thomas Byrom’s appalling* rendition of the Dhammapada, although it’s found there as “Yet the teaching is simple. Do what is right. Be Pure.” Sometimes the quote ends with “At the end of the way is freedom.”

Now the Dhammapada is a scriptural text, so you might wonder why I regard it as fake. Of course it’s not the Dhammapada itself that I think is fraudulent, but Byrom’s version of it.

As far as I’m aware, Byrom didn’t know any Pali, which is the language the Dhammapada is written in. So he didn’t translate the text, but more likely used other people’s translations and perhaps a Pali–English dictionary in order to make up some inspiring poetry that bore little if any resemblance to the original. Even his publisher, Shambhala, doesn’t call Byrom’s Dhammapada a translation.

“Yet the teaching is simple. Do what is right. Be Pure” is supposed to be Dhammapada verse 183, which is one of the most well-known verses from this well-known work.

Here are a few other translations of verse 183, all of them fairly literal:

Mine: “Ceasing to do evil, learning to do good, purifying the heart — this is the teaching of the Buddhas.”

Buddharakkhita: “To avoid all evil, to cultivate good, and to cleanse one’s mind — this is the teaching of the Buddhas.”

Thanissaro: “The non-doing of any evil, the performance of what’s skillful, the cleansing of one’s own mind: this is the teaching of the Awakened.”

Fronsdal: “Doing no evil, Engaging in what’s skillful, And purifying one’s mind: this is the teaching of the Buddhas.”

Narada: “Not to do any evil, to cultivate good, to purify one’s mind, this is the Teaching of the Buddhas.”

If you’re at all familiar with Buddhist teachings you’ll almost certainly have heard this verse. The fact that you probably didn’t recognize Byrom’s quote as being related to Dhammapada verse 183 shows you what a bollocks Byrom made of it.

Byrom’s “The teaching is simple. Do what is right. Be Pure” is a complete outlier (I accidentally typed “outliar” at first, and was tempted to leave it!).

This isn’t, by a long shot, the worst fakery that Byrom pulled off in his Dhammapada. At least, unlike some of his other inventions, this one doesn’t conflict with what the Buddha taught (although he stressed how profound and subtle, and not how simple the Dhamma was). It’s just a terrible, terrible translation.

Th words, “At the end of the way is freedom,” with which this quote sometimes ends, are actually the start of the next verse of the Dhammapada in Byrom’s version, which reads “At the end of the way is freedom. Till then, patience.”

In Buddharakkhita’s very literal translation this is: “Enduring patience is the highest austerity. ‘Nibbana is supreme,’ say the Buddhas.” As you can see, there’s no meaningful connection between Byrom’s words and the original text.

Sometimes I wish that Shambhala, Byrom’s publisher, would just pulp the beautiful mess they’ve created.

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* It’s an appalling work of translation, although a beautiful work of literature.

Someone recently wrote to me asking if he could contribute to my meditation blog at Wildmind Buddhist Meditation. In checking out his work I saw he’d posted an article on his own blog called “79 Zen Quotes that Will Help You Choose the Right Path.” Aha! An opportunity to check out his research chops!

There were five quotes on his list attributed to the Buddha, not one of which was actually by him. Two are on this site, while three were completely new to me.

This one — “Don’t judge others, because you are not perfect” — so far only appears on two places on the internet, which means it might be possible to nip it on the bud, or at least slow its growth a little.*

Of course one of these instances is in the “Zen quotes” article, while the other is on me.me, where it’s not attributed to the Buddha. This suggests that the author of the Zen Quotes article created that attribution.

Anyway, it’s not a Buddha quote. The closest I can think of offhand is verse 50 from the Dhammapada: “Let none find fault with others; let none see the omissions and commissions of others. But let one see one’s own acts, done and undone.”

Verse 257 of the Dhammapada reminds us that judgement can be appropriate, as long as it’s done in the right spirit: “He who does not judge others arbitrarily, but passes judgment impartially according to the truth, that sagacious man is a guardian of law and is called just.”

So we don’t have to be perfect to judge others; we just need to be impartial and to respect facts.

Of course forgiveness and patience are important as well, and remembering our own fallibility is very helpful in tempering our judgements. So I’m not going to be too hard on the gentleman who wrote the “Zen Quotes” article. We all mess up.

*In the form “Don’t judge others. You’re not perfect” it’s found in other places, but so far I haven’t seen it attributed to the Buddha.

As Gruff points out below, “Don’t judge others, because you are not perfect” resembles Matthew 7:1, which is “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” (New International Version). Matthew 7:3 is “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”, which has a similar message. Our fake quote may be an adaptation of those verses.