A reader called Justin asked me about this one:
I came across this quote on Facebook, and I liked the message, but I
don’t know if it’s attributable to the Buddha:‘If you truly loved yourself, you could never hurt another.’
He also sent along a link to the image of the quote shown above (I’ve of course added the “Fake” stamp of disapproval).
My first thought was that this was likely fake, then I briefly considered it to be a reasonable paraphrase of a passage I’m familiar with, then after a comment from a reader (see below) I decided to categorize it as fake because I realized that the paraphrase does actually change the sense of the original in a significant way.
The earliest mention attributed to the Buddha that I’ve found is in a book from 1996: Insight Meditation, by Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, who are very well-respected teachers. There the quote is:
If you truly loved yourself you would never harm another. — The Buddha
Note the two minor differences from the Facebook version: would/could, and hurt/harm.
The Salzberg version was repeated in Don Morreale’s 1998 The Complete Guide to Buddhist America, and in a couple of later books as well.
This turned into “If you truly loved yourself, you would never hurt another” in 2009’s Contentment and the Wizard, by W. T. Watts, Ph.D. This brings us just one word away from the original Salzberg/Goldstein version.
And then we have 2007’s The Secret Power of Yoga: A Woman’s Guide to the Heart and Spirit of the Yoga Sutras, by Nischala Joy Devi, which has both the would/could and harm/hurt changes, giving us the Facebook version:
“If you truly loved yourself, you could never hurt another”
I suspected at first that the original quote was Sharon’s paraphrase of the Buddha’s teaching, rather than his words. I say Sharon rather than Joseph because she’s used variants of the quote in her other books. For example in The Force of Kindness (2010) she writes:
The Buddha said that if we truly loved ourselves we would never harm another, because if we harm another it in some way diminishes who we are.
And in The Kindness Handbook (2008) she says:
The Buddha said at one point that if we truly loved ourselves we would never harm another, because if we harm another it is in some way diminishing who we are; it is taking away from rather than adding to our lives.
The Buddha never said anything like this extended version. The language of “diminishing who we are” is too contemporary and sophisticated for the Pali canon, for example. And I’m not clear that there’s anything in the early teachings that distinguishes “truly loving ourselves” from any other kind of loving ourselves, unless it’s the distinction between pema (conditional affection) and metta (universal lovingkindness), which are contrasted in Buddhist teachings. But on the whole, taking the quotation in this expanded context, it seemed even less likely that this was a genuine quote from the Buddhist scriptures.
It struck me that the closest I knew to this quote was from the Udāna, where the Buddha is talking to Queen Mallikā:
Searching all directions
with your awareness,
you find no one dearer
than yourself.
In the same way, others
are dear to themselves.
So you shouldn’t hurt others
if you love yourself.
Now “you shouldn’t hurt others if you love yourself” is rather different in meaning from “If you truly loved yourself you would never harm another.” The shift from “should” to “would” changes the sense of what’s being said, from an practice that’s to be undertaken (“you love yourself, so bearing in mind that others too love themselves, you shouldn’t harm them”) to something that simply happens (“you love yourself, therefore you will not harm others”).
The Buddha takes loving oneself as a given, and suggests that we need to work on extending that love to others. Sharon Salzberg is suggesting that we don’t really love ourselves, and that if we did learn to really love ourselves, we’d love others too. The Buddha’s suggestion is not that we love ourselves more, while that’s precisely what Sharon is suggesting. These are radically different messages, and Sharon’s paraphrase isn’t acceptable as reading of the original text.
This quote fits with a certain pattern of thought that’s been expressed many times.
A close parallel is from an article in the Saturday Review from 1972: “[I]f we truly love ourselves, we will love others.” It’s hard to tell from Google Books’ snippet view, but the author of that quote is Anthea Lahr, who is reviewing Albert B. Cleage’s Black Christian Nationalism.
And even earlier we have the message “It is our good to bring good to those we love; and so far as we truly love ourselves we love all men we know, for we are of one flesh and one kind,” which is found in Samuel Martin Thompson’s 1955 A Modern Philosophy of Religion. Neither of these seems to be inspired by Buddhism, and in fact both are presented in an explicitly Christian context.
I suspect that it was an awareness of sayings like those that led Sharon Salzberg to the formulation that she tends to use: “If we truly loved ourselves we would never harm another.” This formulation is attractive because it’s what, perhaps, we want the Buddha to say. It’s the absence of this sentiment in Buddhism, combined with its frequency in western culture, which makes it desirable. We’re filling a gap. However we’re filling it with something that the Buddha, so far as we know, didn’t actually teach.
With the exception of Insight Meditation, Sharon always presents the saying in the style of a paraphrase rather than presenting it as a direct quotation. The fact that the only place in her books where the saying is presented as a quote (that I know of) is in a sidebar rather than in the body of the text makes me wonder if the “quote” has been created from Sharon’s words by an editor rather than by the author herself. So the evidence that Sharon Salzberg created the quote is questionable, but it does seem to represent what she thinks the Buddha taught.
I respectfully disagree. I believe the quoted sentence “if we truly loved ourselves we would never harm another” is perfectly fine, and here “would” might even be a better translation than “should”. The spoken verse is one of my bante’s favotite and he talked about it for several times. From my understanding of my bante’s teaching, this verse is about when one has true loving kindness upon oneself, s/he doesn’t hold any grudges towards anybody (grudges against others is a hurt on oneself). Therefore s/he naturally wouldn’t want to hurt others. I think we need to be very careful when discussing Buddha’s words based on English translation.
Well, I’m not persuaded. The Pali is as follows:
Sabbā disā anuparigamma cetasā
Nevajjhagā piyataramattanā kvaci.
Evaṃ piyo puthu attā paresaṃ
Tasmā na hiṃse paramattakāmo
Although my translation skills are rusty, I think it’s saying the following (some words in the Pali are changed in order so that it will make at least some basic sense in English):
So what this is saying is that we are all more dear to ourselves than anyone else is, and we should recognize that others are dear to themselves in the same way also, and so we shouldn’t harm them. It doesn’t suggest that we should be dear to ourselves. It assumes we already are.
It doesn’t seem to be saying anything about “having true lovingkindness for oneself.” I think this is pretty clear from the context of the sutta:
This isn’t talking about some ideal state of self-metta. It’s talking about the ordinary care that we have for ourselves, where we don’t want to be hurt, and want to experience pleasure or happiness. If we recognize this in ourselves, and then see that others have exactly the same basic attitude of being dear to themselves, then we have empathy (anukampā). And once we have empathy, then we can have mettā.
If you have other suggestions about the translation, then I’d be happy to hear them. As I said, my Pali skills are rather rusty, and to be honest my translation skills were never that great, having only studied Pali at university for two years.
It is actually mentioned in the Samyutta Nikaya: https://suttacentral.net/sn3.4/en/sujato
Saṁyutta Nikāya 3
1. Shackles
1. Paṭhamavagga
4. Loved
4. Piyasutta
At Sāvatthī.
Sāvatthinidānaṁ.
Seated to one side, King Pasenadi said to the Buddha,
Ekamantaṁ nisinno kho rājā pasenadi kosalo bhagavantaṁ etadavoca:
“Just now, sir, as I was in private retreat this thought came to mind.
“idha mayhaṁ, bhante, rahogatassa paṭisallīnassa evaṁ cetaso parivitakko udapādi:
‘Who are those who love themselves? And who are those who don’t love themselves?’
‘kesaṁ nu kho piyo attā, kesaṁ appiyo attā’ti?
Then it occurred to me:
Tassa mayhaṁ, bhante, etadahosi:
‘Those who do bad things by way of body, speech, and mind
‘ye ca kho keci kāyena duccaritaṁ caranti, vācāya duccaritaṁ caranti, manasā duccaritaṁ caranti;
don’t love themselves.
tesaṁ appiyo attā.
Even though they may say:
Kiñcāpi te evaṁ vadeyyuṁ:
“I love myself”, they don’t really.
“piyo no attā”ti, atha kho tesaṁ appiyo attā’.
Why is that?
Taṁ kissa hetu?
It’s because they treat themselves like an enemy.
Yañhi appiyo appiyassa kareyya, taṁ te attanāva attano karonti;
That’s why they don’t love themselves.
tasmā tesaṁ appiyo attā.
Those who do good things by way of body, speech, and mind
Ye ca kho keci kāyena sucaritaṁ caranti, vācāya sucaritaṁ caranti, manasā sucaritaṁ caranti;
do love themselves.
tesaṁ piyo attā.
Even though they may say:
Kiñcāpi te evaṁ vadeyyuṁ:
“I don’t love myself”, they do really.
‘appiyo no attā’ti; atha kho tesaṁ piyo attā.
Why is that?
Taṁ kissa hetu?
It’s because they treat themselves like a loved one.
Yañhi piyo piyassa kareyya, taṁ te attanāva attano karonti;
That’s why they do love themselves.’”
tasmā tesaṁ piyo attā”ti.
“If you’d only love yourself,
“Attānañce piyaṁ jaññā,
you’d not yoke yourself to wickedness.
na naṁ pāpena saṁyuje;
For happiness is not easy to find
Na hi taṁ sulabhaṁ hoti,
by someone who does bad deeds.
sukhaṁ dukkaṭakārinā.
When you’re seized by the terminator
Antakenādhipannassa,
as you give up your human life,
jahato mānusaṁ bhavaṁ;
what can you call your own?
Kiñhi tassa sakaṁ hoti,
What do you take when you go?
kiñca ādāya gacchati;
What goes with you,
Kiñcassa anugaṁ hoti,
like a shadow that never leaves?
chāyāva anapāyinī.
Both the good and the bad
Ubho puññañca pāpañca,
that a mortal does in this life
yaṁ macco kurute idha;
is what they can call their own.
Tañhi tassa sakaṁ hoti,
That’s what they take when they go.
taṁva ādāya gacchati;
That’s what goes with them,
Taṁvassa anugaṁ hoti,
like a shadow that never leaves.
chāyāva anapāyinī.
That’s why you should do good,
Tasmā kareyya kalyāṇaṁ,
investing in the future life.
nicayaṁ samparāyikaṁ;
The good deeds of sentient beings
Puññāni paralokasmiṁ,
support them in the next world.”
patiṭṭhā honti pāṇinan”ti.
That’s a sutta I know and love very well. The main thrust is that some people say they love themselves but act in ways that cause themselves suffering, and that others say they don’t love themselves but act in ways that lead to their own happiness. What it doesn’t say is that if you truly loved yourself you could never hurt someone else. As far as I’m aware that’s not something the Buddha said, although I’m sure he would have agreed with it.