“A friend is someone who knows everything about your life and still loves you.”

This is another of the fake quotes I found in a web page of supposed “Buddha quotes about friendship. All of the quotes on the page were fake. And the page ranked number 1 on Google for “Buddha quotes on friendship,” which is rather sad.

I’ve already dealt with the first of the quotes, “Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace.”  Now it’s time for the second, “A friend is someone who knows everything about your life and still loves you.”

… Read the rest of this article » ““A friend is someone who knows everything about your life and still loves you.””

“Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace.”

I recently happened to do a search on Google for “Buddha Quotes on Friendship” and was perturbed to find that the top result was on a quotes website page that entirely consisted of fake quotes. Not only that, but Google had pulled information from that site and listed it in their “featured snippets,” which is a little information panel at the top of the results.

This is a major Google fail, since they pride themselves on the quality … Read the rest of this article » ““Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace.””

“If you know both your enemy and yourself, you can win every battle without jeopardy”

Paul, a contact on the discussion board at SuttaCentral.net, sent me this one. He was on the United States VA (Veterans Administration) website looking at their anger management course, and right on the first page he saw the quote that’s in the image above. He was instantly suspicious, and rightly so.

The quote is actually from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (III, 31), which in Lionel Giles’ translation is “Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, … Read the rest of this article » ““If you know both your enemy and yourself, you can win every battle without jeopardy””

“Those whom summer’s heat tortures yearn for the full moon of autumn…”

The following has appeared a number of times on the internet, and a few times in printed books, attributed to the Buddha:

Those whom summer’s heat tortures yearn for the full moon of autumn
Without even fearing the idea
That a hundred days of their life will then have passed forever.

It doesn’t seem to have made it into any of the quotation sites yet.

It originates in Mathieu Ricard’s book, “Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill.”

Ricard is a very famous monk who is well-known for his levels of happiness, which have been measured, using various … Read the rest of this article » ““Those whom summer’s heat tortures yearn for the full moon of autumn…””

“The First Free Women” as literary fraud

I recently posted the message below (which I’ve edited lightly) on a forum for members of the Triratna Buddhist Order, which I’m a part of. It offers more thoughts on a literary fraud that’s being perpetrated by Shambhala Publications, the largest publisher of Buddhist books in the west, and suggests a few courses of action.

A lot of people in Triratna — especially women — are very excited by Matty Weingast’s book, “The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns,” which was published early last year by Shambhala Publications, and now seems to be gaining great popularity.… Read the rest of this article » ““The First Free Women” as literary fraud”

An open letter to Nikko Odiseos, president of Shambhala Publications

IMPORTANT NOTE: The following letter was written to protest the way in which the book, “The First Free Women,” was inaccurately presented by Shambhala Publications as a translation of a Buddhist scripture (the Therigatha), when in fact it was a book of original poetry, loosely inspired by the early Buddhist nuns whose poems are collected in that work.

As as result of this protest (not just the letter here, but the work of many individuals, Shambhala has agreed to withdraw the book from sale and to republish it in a firm that makes it clear the book is an … Read the rest of this article » “An open letter to Nikko Odiseos, president of Shambhala Publications”

“A Buddhist literary scandal…”

Venerable Akaliko has written a brilliant exposé of the travesty that is “The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns.” This purports to be a translation, by Matty Weingast, of poems originally written, as you’d expect, by early Buddhist nuns who lived up to 2,500 years ago.

Actually it’s a book of poems Matty made up and is passing off as the words of those nuns.

This affair gives every appearance of being a deeply deceptive and cynical exercise by both Matty and Shambhala, the book’s publisher. Much of the deception being practiced by Matty is self-deception. He … Read the rest of this article » ““A Buddhist literary scandal…””

“The world is a looking glass. It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts.”

A kind reader of this blog alerted me to this one yesterday: “The world is a looking glass. It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts. Rule your mind or it will rule you.”

This is a composite fake quote. The final sentence, “Rule your mind or it will rule you,” is one I’ve dealt with elsewhere. It’s a paraphrase of a quote by the Roman lyric poet, Horace (65–27 BCE).

The first two sentences were correctly identified by my correspondent as being from the work of the Indian-born English novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray. … Read the rest of this article » ““The world is a looking glass. It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts.””

Translations that annihilate

In the Sutta Central discussion forum, Ayya Sudhamma (who goes by the handle “@Charlotteannun” there), posted an interesting analysis of a supposed translation of the Therigatha. The title literally means “Poems of the elder nuns,” and it’s an ancient Buddhist compilation of poems or songs composed by enlightened female disciples of the Buddha. It, and its counterpart the Theragatha (“Poems of the elder monks”), are among my favorite texts, since they directly and vividly present the voices of practitioners two and a half millennia ago, giving insight into their outer and inner lives.

I’ll quote, with Ayya Suddhamma’s permission, … Read the rest of this article » “Translations that annihilate”

The Buddha on Fake Buddha Quotes (7)

I just stumbled across another reference to the Buddha talking about the practice of pointing out when something attributed to him is not actually something he said.

It’s in a discourse where the Buddha is asked, “How is harmony in the sangha (monastic community) defined?”

The Buddha lists ten activities that go on in the monastic community. These are all potential flash-points because they can create bad feeling and lead to splits in the community.

The ten things are actually five pairs, of which the first, third, and fifth are particularly relevant. These are:

  • “When a mendicant explains what is
… Read the rest of this article » “The Buddha on Fake Buddha Quotes (7)”