Fake Buddha Quotes

Stephen Feldman, one of my connections on Google Plus (the world’s best social media site, which Google is unfortunately pulling the plug on) brought this one to my attention. It’s one I’d never seen before.

It often surprises me the things that people take to be quotes from the Buddha. Then I remember that if you’ve no experience of the Buddhist scriptures then you’ve no idea of the patterns and language that the Buddha’s recorded as having used. Of course those records may be wrong. They probably are. But they’re all we have to go on. And if you’ve never read them you’ve no way of telling whether something is likely to be fake or not.

Not all of “Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, give much. Fill your life with love. Do as you would be done by” is entirely different from the kind of thing you find in the early scriptures, but much of it is. I could imagine a short pithy statement like “Keep your heart free from hate” in a text like the Dhammapada. But “Fill your life with love” is far too contemporary and “Do as you would be done by” resembles the Christian scriptures much more than it does the Buddhist ones.

The internet (or Google’s search results) are pretty much agreed that this quote is by Norman Vincent Peale, the author of “The Power of Positive Thinking,” so of course the quote isn’t by Norman Vincent Peale, the author of “The Power of Positive Thinking.”

It’s instead from a 1904 book, “The Culture of Simplicity,” by Malcolm James McLeod, who was a Canadian presbyterian minister, educated at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and Princeton University in New Jersey. He appears to have been a damned handsome fellow, no doubt a result of his Scottish ancestry.

Someone else has prefaced the words “The way to happiness is…”

McLeod was inspired to write his book as a result of reading “The Simple Life” by the Rev. Charles Wagner of Paris. “Simplicity is spirituality; simplicity is power,” he says in the introduction.

Here are some snippets from the Buddhist scriptures that cover some of the same territory as McLeod’s quote:

• On keeping the heart free from hate: “He bears no ill will and is not corrupt in the resolves of his heart. [He thinks,] ‘May these beings be free from animosity, free from oppression, free from trouble, and may they look after themselves with ease!'” (AN 10.176)
• On keeping the mind free from worry: “Not being full of desire and attachment, he is not worried.” (SN 22.7)
• On living simple: “A monk, reflecting appropriately, uses the robe simply to counteract cold, to counteract heat, to counteract the touch of flies, mosquitoes, wind, sun, & reptiles; simply for the purpose of covering the parts of the body that cause shame.” (MN 2)
• On giving: “If beings knew, as I know, the results of giving & sharing, they would not eat without having given, nor would the stain of selfishness overcome their minds.” (Iti. 1.26)
• On filling your life with love: “Thus you should train yourselves: ‘Our awareness-release through good-will will be cultivated, developed, pursued, handed the reins and taken as a basis, given a grounding, steadied, consolidated, & well-undertaken. That’s how you should train yourselves.” (SN 20.5)
• On doing as you would be done by: “All tremble at violence; life is dear to all. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.” (Dhp 130)

You’ll notice that the style of these quotes is much more verbose. Also there are very few imperative statements in the early scriptures (“Do this, do that, do the other”), a few subjunctive statements (“He would/should do this, do that, do the other”) and lots of indicative statements (“He does this, does that, does the other.”)

McLeod’s quote is full of imperatives, and that’s one reason it would stands out as probably not being from the Buddhist scriptures.

The closest I’ve seen to the McLeod original (plus its added prefix) is the following quote, which is from the Itivuttika. You’ll notice that it’s partly been translated into the imperative (“Train in…”) although in the original Pali it’s in the subjunctive (sikkheyya, “One should train…”) , is framed in terms of what brings happiness, and covers themes of giving and love:

Train in acts of merit that bring long-lasting bliss — develop giving, a life in tune, a mind of good-will. Developing these three things that bring about bliss, the wise reappear in a world of bliss unalloyed.

There’s an alternative translation here.

André Olivier found this one as an image in an online comment and sent it to me, saying, “It seems like the strangest example of a fake Buddha quote … It just seems wrong in every way.” He has a good instinct.

This is not the kind of thing the Buddha said. He didn’t say there was no god. In the scriptures he’s depicted as talking with gods, although those passages may be intended to be taken humorously.

There’s one rather hilarious (by 2,500-year-old standards) passage where a monk is depicted as having worked his way up through all the lesser gods to the Great Brahma himself, asking where the four elements come to an end. Brahma blusters, declaring over and over how he is all-knowing. The monk calls him on his BS, and eventually Brahma takes him to one side, confesses that he doesn’t want the other gods to know that there are things he doesn’t know, and tells the monk to go see the Buddha, who is the only one who can answer his question.

He did ridicule the idea of a creator god, depicting Brahma as having deluded himself into thinking he had created the universe and the other gods. I tend to take that as an allegorization of  mamankara, or “mine-making” which is the way that part of us deludedly thinks that it owns and is responsible for other parts of us, including our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

He criticized the idea that our suffering is due to the actions of gods and said that if this were the case, then god must be evil.

He certainly wouldn’t have said that “only this world is true.” He’s depicted as talking about rebirth in other realms, including hells and heavens.

The URL in the image doesn’t lead to an existing Facebook page. Possibly at some point the Bharatiya Yukthivadi Sangham organization had one, and it was removed. The Yukthivadi Sangham is a rationalist and humanist organization in India. Bharatiya means “Indian” so I assume that this is a national organization. I’m surprised they don’t have a Facebook page. Or maybe I just failed to find it.

It’s interesting that a rationalist organization is using the Buddha (in the form of a fake quote) to argue against theism. Despite this, I wish them well as they work to combat the influence of religion on Indian politics and society.

This one is exceedingly popular in the Triratna Buddhist Community, of which I’m a part. Sometimes it’s found as “With mindfulness, strive on” and sometimes simply as “With mindfulness, strive.”

Sangharakshita, the late founder of the Triratna community and the Triratna Buddhist Order (he passed away just over two weeks ago), says in his book “Living With Awareness,” “The Buddha’s last words, we are told, were appamādena sampādetha – with mindfulness, strive.”

Triratna Order member Maitreyabandhu, in his “The Journey and the Guide,” wrote, “And [the Buddha’s] last words were ‘All conditioned things are impermanent. With mindfulness strive on.’ ”

Another Order member, Vajragupta, in his book, “Buddhism: Tools for Living Your Life” has “In the traditional accounts of the Buddha’s life, we see him time and again teaching his followers how to develop mindfulness and exhorting them to maintain it at all times. His very last words were, ‘With mindfulness, strive on.’ ”

Believe me, there is no shortage of examples. It’s a bit embarrassing that my own lot are so wedded to this mistranslation.

It isn’t entirely unique to Triratna. Lawrence Khantipalo Mills, in his 1983 book, “Pointing to Dhamma,” says, “Having comforted them Lord Buddha uttered his last words, an exhortation to persevere: ‘Listen well, O bhikkhus, I exhort you; Subject to decay are all compounded things: With mindfulness strive on.’ ” But Khantipalo, perhaps uncoincidentally, studied and practiced with Sangharakshita in Kalimpong, India. They may both have picked up this mistranslation from the same source, or Khantipalo may have picked it up from Sangharakshita.

The latter appears to have used “With mindfulness, strive on” as early as 1961, in an essay in Volume 69 of the Maha Bodhi Journal. At least I assume he wrote the article: although I can’t see the whole thing on Google Books, the wording in the essay is identical to that found in a passage in Sangharakshita’s “The Three Jewels,” first published in 1967.

The problem with translating appamādena sampādetha as “With mindfulness, strive on” is that appamāda is not mindfulness. As I wrote in another article:

Appamāda is the opposite of pamāda, which means heedlessness, carelessness, negligence, or even literal drunkenness. As well as being translated as heedfulness it’s also rendered as diligence, earnestness, and so on. There’s an entire chapter of the Dhammapada on the topic of appamāda, which gives you a sense of the flavor of the term. It’s very much to do with moral restraint and self-control in the face of temptation.

The -ena ending indicates the instrumental case — “by means of” — so that the word appamādena means “by means of diligence” or “diligently.” It could also be translated as “with self-control.” There is no one word in English that can adequately translate appamādena.

Obviously self-control and mindfulness are related to each other, but they are distinct terms. Mindfulness in Pali is sati, which has the primary meaning of “memory” or “recollection.” The English word “recollected” has both the sense of “remembered” (“I recollected meeting him”) and of mindful presence (“He recollected himself.”)  Appamāda is a more dynamic and energetic quality than mindfulness. Mindfulness notices; appamāda (I’m going to call it “self-control”) protects.

In the article I just quoted from above, which explores another mistranslation of the Buddha’s last words, I noted that various translators had variously rendered appamādena sampadetha as “Persist with diligence,” “Strive on with heedfulness,” “Bring about completion by being heedful,” “Strive with earnestness,” “Strive on untiringly,” and “Strive to attain the goal by diligence.”

No serious translator renders appamāda as “mindfulness.”

When Michael O’Connor wrote asking about this one I was stunned to find that I hadn’t already written it up. Perhaps I did: a few years ago the site was badly hacked and I lost a few articles.

Anyway, I’ve seen “Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence” numerous times over the years. The second part, “Strive on with diligence” is pretty much OK (I realized that I also have to write up the mis-translation “With mindfulness, strive on”). The wording of the first part is very odd.

This quote is supposed to be the final words of the Buddha before he died, or had his “parinirvana,” as it’s often called (although, rather ridiculously, it’s often said that he “went to parinirvana,” as if it’s a place you can go to). It purports to come from the Maha-Parinibbana Sutta, “parinibbana” being the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit parinirvana.

In Pali the Buddha’s final words were: “Vayadhammā saṅkhārā. Appamādena sampādetha.”

This can, like anything in a foreign language, be translated in various ways:

• Sujato: “Conditions fall apart. Persist with diligence.”
• Anandajoti: “[All] conditioned things are subject to decay, strive on with heedfulness!”
• Thanissaro: “All fabrications are subject to decay. Bring about completion by being heedful.”
• Sister Vajira & Francis Story: “All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!”
• Maurice Walshe: “All conditioned things are of a nature to decay—strive on untiringly.”
• Bhikkhu Bodhi: “Formations are bound to vanish. Strive to attain the goal by diligence.” (From a parallel passage in the Samyutta Nikaya.)

As you can see, there’s a lot of variation.

The First Sentence: Vayadhammā saṅkhārā

Each of the two sentences in Pali has two words. The first sentence is Vayadhammā saṅkhārā

Vayadhammā

Vayadhammā is a compound of vaya and dhammā.

Vaya means:

1. loss, want, expense
2. decay

Dhamma is an astonishingly broad term, although its many meanings relate to the Sanskrit root dhṛ, which means to support. In this particular context it means something like “nature,” not in the sense of wildlife, but in the sense of having a particular character.

So vayadhammā is “having the nature to decay.”

Saṅkhārā

The second word in the sentence is saṅkhārā. It too has two parts: saṅ- is a prefix that, like the Latin com- means “together.” The khārā part is related to the verb karoti, which is to make, do, form, or build.

So saṅkhārā means “put together” — hence the various translations of “conditioned things,” “compounded things,” “fabrications,” and so on.

So the first sentence has the sense, “Things that are put together fall apart.”

Saṅkhārā can also refer to mental states that we conjure up (or fabricate) in the mind, and which cause us suffering. So this sentence could also be: “All fabricated mental states [that cause suffering] pass away.” This is encouraging because it’s showing us that the mind is capable of being purified so that we can attain peace. This is probably not what the Buddha meant, but his words could, I think, be interpreted in that way.

The translation “Chaos is inherent in all compounded things” is a bit odd—specifically that word “chaos,” which means “disorder and confusion.”  Let’s come back to the quote at the end.

The Second Sentence: Appamādena sampādetha

Again we have a simple two-word sentence.

Appamāda

Appamāda is the opposite of pamāda, which means heedlessness, carelessness, negligence, or even literal drunkenness. As well as being translated as heedfulness it’s also rendered as diligence, earnestness, and so on. There’s an entire chapter of the Dhammapada on the topic of appamāda, which gives you a sense of the flavor of the term. It’s very much to do with moral restraint and self-control in the face of temptation.

The -ena ending indicates the instrumental case — “by means of” — so that the word appamādena means “by means of diligence” or “diligently.” It could also be translated as “with self-control.” Walsh’s translation “untiringly” is a very poor effort.

There is no one word that can adequately translate appamādena.

Sampādetha

Sampādetha means:

1. to procure, obtain
2. to strive, to try to accomplish one’s aim

It’s the secondary meaning that’s important here. All of the translations above use “strive,” except for Thanissaro’s. He has “bring about completion,” which focuses more on the “accomplish one’s aim” part of the definition, but also ties in the primary sense of sampādetha, which is procuring or obtaining.

Translating sampādetha as “strive” isn’t wrong, but it misses the element of the striving being directed toward a goal, which in the context of the Buddha’s final words is the goal of spiritual awakening.

So the second sentence means something like “With diligent self-control, strive for the goal.” Bhikkhu Bodhi’s “Strive to attain the goal” captures this perfectly.

Anyway, “chaos” just feels wrong. The Buddha said that things fall apart, not that they are chaotic. The “chaos” quote is the result of someone (almost certainly in the early 21st century) messing around with a more legitimate version.

The earliest version I’ve found, which I think is the original,  dates all the way back to 1881! It’s in Volume XI of the series “Sacred Books of the East,” (page 114) edited by F. Max Müller. The translation is by Thomas William Rhys Davids, founder of the Pali Text Society.

Decay is inherent in all component things! Work out your salvation with diligence!

Note thatRhys Davids used “component things” rather than “compounded things.”

AsRhys Davids’ translation has been passed on, it’s evolved. Sometimes it’s found as

Decay is inherent in all compounded things; strive on with vigilance.

And also as:

Decay is inherent in all compounded things. Work out your own salvation with diligence.

Notice here how “your” has become “your own.”

The final mutation, by some as-yet unknown person, was to change “decay” to “chaos,” which is inaccurate enough that I feel OK about categorizing this one as fake.

I’m pretty sure this one is a paraphrase of a passage in the Maha-Parinibbana Sutta, which is an account of the Buddha’s last days. The problem with the paraphrase is that it appears to be setting up a kind of “competitive practice” scenario, which sounds rather odd to my ear.

The original passage mentions various miracles that take place, showing the gods revering the dying Buddha:

Ananda, the twin sal-trees are in full bloom, even though it’s not the flowering season. They shower, strew, & sprinkle on the Tathagata’s body in homage to him. Heavenly coral-tree blossoms are falling from the sky… Heavenly sandalwood powder is falling from the sky… Heavenly music is playing in the sky…

The gods aren’t mentioned here, but I assume that divine worship is being implied.

And it’s this that’s then compared with practicing the Dharma:

Heavenly songs are sung in the sky, in homage to the Tathagata. But it is not to this extent that a Tathagata is worshipped, honored, respected, venerated, or paid homage to. Rather, the monk, nun, male lay follower, or female lay follower who keeps practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma, who keeps practicing masterfully, who lives in accordance with the Dhamma: that is the person who worships, honors, respects, venerates, & pays homage to the Tathagata with the highest homage.

So the Buddha is saying, in effect, “Look, the gods are performing all these miracles in veneration of me, but if you really want to show me respect then practice my teachings.

The original doesn’t equate practicing better with showing greater reverence, but contrasts worship with practice, implying that practice is true worship.

This quote seems to have arisen through a “slip of the eye,” where the Venerable Narada Thera, in his book, The Buddha and His Teachings,” paraphrased what the Buddha’s attitude was toward worship and practice:

What the Buddha expects from His adherents are not these forms of obeisance but the actual observance of His Teachings. “He who practises my teaching best, reveres me most”, is the advice of the Buddha. [Page xii Pariyatti’s 3rd Edition]

Unfortunately someone has taken this paraphrase to be a direct quote from the Buddha. And although I’m generally a fan of Narada’s writings and translations, I have to say that I don’t think this was a very good paraphrase to start with. Although I’ve seen it on a few articles online and in several books, it hasn’t reached the quote sites yet, and isn’t at the fridge magnet level of popularity. Give it time…

I was introduced to this particular Fake Buddha Quote by someone who wanted to show me their Buddha quote website. As is often the case, most of his quotes were fake.

This one comes from Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara, or “Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.” Shantideva was an 8th century Indian teacher who was a monk at Nalanda University. This work outlines a Mahayana concept of a compassionate path to awakening—one where your motivation for spiritual growth is not to benefit just yourself but all beings.

There’s a lot of great stuff in the “Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life,” including some very practical reflections for developing patience.

This particular quote is verse 10 from from Chapter 6.

གལ་ཏེ་བཅོས་སུ་ཡོད་ན་ནི། །
དེ་ལ་མི་དགར་ཅི་ཞིག་ཡོད། །
གལ་ཏེ་བཅོས་སུ་མེད་ན་ནི། །
དེ་ལ་མི་དགའ་བྱས་ཅི་ཕན། །

If a problem can be solved,
What reason is there to be upset?
If there is no possible solution,
What use is there in being sad?

[Source: Rigpawiki]

The Dalai Lama is a big fan of Shantideva, and a lot of his teaching is a restatement of things from the Bodhicaryavatara. So his version of the quote above, found in “Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness” (page 99) is:

If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.

This one is from a longer quote purporting to be from the Digha Nikaya, which is a legitimate collection of Buddhist scriptures:

Sakka asked the Buddha: “Do different religious teachers head for the same goal or practice the same disciplines or aspire to the same thing?” “No, Sakka, they do not. And why? This world is made up of myriad different states of being, and people adhere to one or another of these states and become tenaciously possessive of them, saying, ‘This alone is true, everything else is false.’ It is like a territory that they believe is theirs. So all religious teachers do not teach the same goal or the same discipline, nor do they aspire to the same thing. But if you find truth in any religion or philosophy, then accept that truth without prejudice.

Sakka is a god, and the Buddha is often portrayed as having conversations with deities in which he gives them spiritual instruction or sometimes (notably in the case of Brahma) shows them up as being pompous blowhards.

“Digha Nikaya” means “Long collection” and it contains 34 suttas (discourses), arranged in three chapters. This particular sutta is the Sakkapañha Sutta, or “Discourse on Sakka’s questions.”

And this particular English rendition is from Anne Bancroft’s “The Buddha Speaks.” This is not the American actress, but an English Buddhist who was, many years ago, part of the same order I was ordained into in 1993. She’s now very elderly, but the last I heard of her she was still going strong. She didn’t ever study Pali to the best of my knowledge, and produced a version of the Dhammapada that is really very inaccurate, and that created at least one Fake Buddha Quote. The whole phenomenon of getting people who don’t know a language to do “translations” is very odd.

It’s the sentence at the end of the long quote above that’s the problem. It’s just not in the sutta! I assume that Bancroft added it herself, although it’s conceivable someone else did and she merely copied it.

Version by Sujato

Here’s Bhikkhu Sujato’s version. I’ve gone on a bit beyond the end of the passage above, so that you can see that there’s nothing corresponding to the sentence in question:

And then Sakka asked another question:

“Dear sir, do all ascetics and brahmins have the same doctrine, ethics, desires, and attachments?” “No, lord of gods, they do not.”

“Why not?” “The world has many and diverse elements. Whatever element sentient beings insist on in this world of many and diverse elements, they obstinately stick to it, insisting that: ‘This is the only truth, other ideas are stupid.’ That’s why not all ascetics and brahmins have the same doctrine, ethics, desires, and attachments.”

“Dear sir, have all ascetics and brahmins reached the ultimate end, the ultimate sanctuary, the ultimate spiritual life, the ultimate goal?” “No, lord of gods, they have not.”

Version by Thanissaro

And here’s Thanissaro’s version, which again I’ve run on to the start of the next section:

Then Sakka, having delighted in & expressed his approval of the Blessed One’s words, asked him a further question: “Dear sir, do all brahmans & contemplatives teach the same doctrine, adhere to the same precepts, desire the same thing, aim at the same goal?”

“No, deva-king, not all brahmans & contemplatives teach the same doctrine, adhere to the same precepts, desire the same thing, aim at the same goal.”

“Why, dear sir, don’t all brahmans & contemplatives teach the same doctrine, adhere to the same precepts, desire the same thing, aim at the same goal?”

“The world is made up of many properties, various properties. Because of the many & various properties in the world, then whichever property living beings get fixated on, they become entrenched & latch onto it, saying, ‘Only this is true; anything else is worthless.’ This is why not all brahmans & contemplatives teach the same doctrine, adhere to the same precepts, desire the same thing, aim at the same goal.”

“But, dear sir, are all brahmans & contemplatives utterly complete, utterly free from bonds, followers of the utterly holy life, utterly consummate?”

As far as I’m aware there’s nothing corresponding to “But if you find truth in any religion or philosophy, then accept that truth without prejudice” in the scriptures. If you’ve seen it, please let me know.

Other Corresponding Teachings

I don’t think that the Buddha would have disagreed with the statement, though, based on other things that he said. To the Kalamas, who were confused by the many contradictory teachings they heard, he taught, “When you yourselves know: ‘These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,’ enter on and abide in them.”

And this next one isn’t the Buddha, but Ananda, one of his chief disciples answering a question put to him by the Buddha about whether all paths of practice are valid. But the Buddha, having heard Ananda’s response, approves:

“When — by following a life of precept & practice, a life, a holy life that is followed as of essential worth — one’s unskillful mental qualities decline while one’s skillful mental qualities increase: that sort of precept & practice, life, holy life that is followed as of essential worth is fruitful.”

And at another time Ananda says something along the same lines:

Those who teach a Dhamma [teaching] for the abandoning of passion, for the abandoning of aversion, for the abandoning of delusion — their Dhamma is well-taught. Those who have practiced for the abandoning of passion, for the abandoning of aversion, for the abandoning of delusion — they have practiced well in this world.

So the quote in question is aligned with the Buddha’s teaching but since it doesn’t appear to be something he’s recorded as having said, it would be best not to refer to it as being one of his sayings.

Incidentally, you might have noticed, as you compared the three versions of the Sakkapañha Sutta above, that there’s nothing in Sujato or Thanissaro’s versions that corresponds to “It is like a territory that they believe is theirs.” That seems to be another interpolation.

See When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.