Search Results for: Osho

“Of all footprints, that of the elephant is supreme. Similarly, of all mindfulness meditation, that on death is supreme.”

A friend recently asked me about this quote — “Of all footprints, that of the elephant is supreme. Similarly, of all mindfulness meditation, that on death is supreme” — because she’s scrupulous about sourcing her attributions. I saw nothing suspicious about the quote at all but I like to help out a Dharma sister and so I went hunting.

The quote is very much in keeping with the style and content of the early scriptures, but I couldn’t find anything corresponding to this in either Access to Insight or, more tellingly, in Sutta Central. So it didn’t seem to …

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“Faith and prayer both are invisible, but they make impossible things possible”

This one was just brought to my attention. It’s listed on the badly misnamed “Quotes Master” site as being by the Buddha. It’s not. Neither are many of the quotes you’ll find there.

Let’s talk about prayer. No, let’s have the Buddha talk about prayer. Here’s one good image of the fruitlessness of merely wishing for something:

Suppose a man in need of butter, looking for butter, wandering in search of butter, would sprinkle water on water in a crock and twirl it with a churn-stick. If he were to sprinkle water on water in a crock and

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“Care about your children. Just bless them instead of worrying about them, as every child is the little Buddha who helps his parents to grow up.”

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! The competition for “Worst Fake Buddha Quote of All Time” has been categorically won by the following:

“Care about your children. Just bless them instead of worrying about them, as every child is the little Buddha who helps his parents to grow up.”

This particular quote is like one of those “Alpine Meadow” car air-fresheners: simultaneously sweet and putrid, and it bears as much resemblance to how the Buddha taught as the smell of one of those air-fresheners does to a genuine flower.

The quote is so awful that I expected it not …

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Does God exist?

There are a number of versions of the following story in circulation:

One day in the early morning Gautama Buddha was sitting in a garden quietly with his disciples. A man arrived silently and stood in the shadows, that man was a great devotee of Lord Rama. He had built many temples across the country, he had devoted many years in the service of Lord Rama. He would always chant Rama’s name and contemplate on Rama’s greatness. He was old and close to his last years. Even after many years of dedicated spiritual effort he was not realized.

He wanted

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“Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering.”

I’ve seen this one in a few places purporting to be from the Buddha. It’s definitely not something the Buddha said. Mostly this is attributed to Osho/Rajneesh, and that’s correct

It’s usually included as part of this longer quotation:

Suffering is not holding you. You are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you’ll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You’ll see that no one else other than you was responsible. The truth is that existence wants your life to become a festival,

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“Life looks meaningless because I am searching for meaning … If I don’t long for meaning, then what is meaningless?”

This rather long quote was passed on to me by Christopher Leibow (Myoshin) of the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship:

Life looks meaningless because I am searching for meaning. Life is not meaningless; it becomes meaningless, it looks meaningless, because of my longing for meaning. The problem is my longing for meaning, not the meaninglessness of life. If I don’t long for meaning, then what is meaningless? Then great joy is released.

Sometimes the words “All is as it is” are added to the end.

Myoshin kindly pointed out that this (including the extra “All is as it is”) comes …

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“Life has no meaning in itself but it is itself an opportunity to make it meaningful.”

Pema Yangchen passed this one on to me today, having spotted it on Facebook.

Once a man asked to Buddha “What is the meaning of life?” Buddha simply exclaimed “Life has no meaning in itself but it is itself an opportunity to make it meaningful.”

It’s completely bogus of course. There’s certainly nothing in the Pali canon where the Buddha talks about the “meaning of life,” “the secret of existence,” etc.

The phrase, “the meaning of life,” is actually quite modern, at least in English. Using Google Books I haven’t found any instances of that expression before the mid-1800s. …

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Recommended site: Antiviral

A surprising amount of the stuff that’s passed around in social media is fake. Some of it should be obvious, like articles from the satirical publication The Onion that are read as if they were genuine news stories. Some are more difficult to spot, although many of them should by rights have social media users’ bullshit detectors registering 11 on a scale of one to ten.

To help us sift the gold dust from the coal dust is a relatively new feature on Gawker.com called “Antiviral.” That’s “anti–viral images, news stories, etc.” The blog doesn’t just debunk fake …

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The man who spit on Buddha’s face

Here’s a long story. Brace yourselves:

The Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples when a man came and spat in his face. He wiped it off, and he asked the man, “What next? What do you want to say next?” The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on somebody’s face, he will ask, “What next?” He had no such experience in his past. He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted. Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to

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“You throw thorns—falling in my silence they become flowers.”

The graphic on this page is from The Quote Factory, which seems rather ironic. I wonder if they realize how many of their quotes are manufactured?

This particular one is all over the net, attributed to the Buddha. It’s actually by Osho, the “Guru Formerly Known as Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh,” who was famous for his numerous Rolls Royces, the wild sex he encouraged among his disciples, and the 1984 bioterror attack that his Oregon Commune launched on 751 citizens of The Dalles, Oregon, in an attempt to sway the outcome of an election so that their own candidates could win …

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