My friend Steve Bell in NYC sent this one along. It strikes me as being the perfect “Hallmark Buddha Quote,” and in fact it seems to be found largely on products on cards, iPhone cases, T-shirts, etc.

I’ve no idea what the origins of this one are. It doesn’t closely remind me of anything I’m familiar with from the Pali canon.

It bears a slight resemblance to this verse uttered to the Buddha by “a certain devata”:

What’s given bears fruit as pleasure.
What isn’t given does not:
thieves take it away, or kings;
it gets burnt by fire or lost.

And it also slightly resembles this verse, which is said to have been uttered by the Buddha himself, when he talked about the benefits of giving food:

The prudent person giving life, strength,
beauty, quick-wittedness —
the wise person, a giver of happiness —
attains happiness himself.

But neither of these remotely seems like the basis of “Happiness is not having a lot. Happiness is giving a lot.”

This does however resemble more closely a quote attributed to H. Jackson Brown, author of Life’s Little Instruction Book:

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.

But the sentiment of the quote, which is more or less another way of saying “It’s better to give than to receive” is common enough.

The quote doesn’t seem have made its way into any books yet, according to a search of Google Books.

Anyone familiar with any canonical saying that’s even close to this quote?

This is just the start of a calamitous misreading of a famous passage from the Kalama Sutta. I’ve dealt with a libertarian mistranslation of this verse elsewhere, but this version is different.

But here’s the full quote, lifted from one of the well-known quotes sites that litter the web:

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
Buddha quotes (Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.)

It’s ironic that this, one of the commonest Fake Buddha Quotes, is about not believing things just because you’ve read them somewhere, but for many people the assumption seems to be, “It must be true — I saw it on a website!”

So first let me state that the Buddha was not a “Hindu Prince.” He was not a “Hindu” and he was not a “prince.” We don’t know what, if any, religious tradition the Buddha-to-be followed in his youth, and the first mention that’s made of any religious endeavors is his encounters with the two teachers Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta. These two teachers followed meditative traditions, but it’s anachronistic to refer to them, or the Buddha, as Hindus. The Buddha himself came from a Republic in which there were, of course, no kings and no princes. In the early text there is no mention of him being a prince or his father being a king, and it’s clear that he lived at a time when the last republics (including the one in which he was born) were being swallowed up by the newly-emergent monarchies. Several hundred years later, monarchies were well-established, republics were unthinkable, and so the Buddha was seen as having been born in a kingdom and (because people like their heroes) he was seen as an heir to that kindgom — an heir, no less, that rejected kingship for an even more noble spiritual “career.”

But on to the quote. In the original Kalama Sutta, we have:

“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.”

I won’t go through a point-by-point comparison, but look at the two criteria for acceptance of teachings:

• But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
• When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to welfare & to happiness’ — then you should enter & remain in them.

In the original quote, accepting something because it “agrees with reason” would seem to be rejected, because “logical conjecture” and “inference” have been rejected, at least as sufficient bases for accepting a teaching as valid. It’s not that logic is rejected as such, just that it can’t be relied on. What is needed is experience. We need to “know for ourselves.”

What we need to know for ourselves is not whether a teaching “agrees with reason” but whether when put into practice they are skillful, blameless, praised by the wise, and lead to welfare and to happiness.

This garbled version of the Kalama Sutta goes back to 1956, where it appeared in a 1956 book called “2500 Buddha Jayanti,” celebrating the 2500th anniversary of the Buddha’s parinirvana. I haven’t read the book, but this recasting of the Buddha’s teaching may have been done to make Buddhism appear more “rational.”

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.

A reader called Gerald wrote to me recently and asked me about a “fishy” quote:

Hello! I have come across this quote and would like to know your input. (smells fishy). Thank you! Buddha was asked: “What have you gained from Meditation?” He replied: “Nothing.” “However”, Buddha said, “let me tell you what I lost : Anger, Anxiety, Depression, Insecurity, Fear of Old, Age and Death.”

That one’s as fishy as a barrel of mackerel.

This particular quote is found in many variants. The locus classicus for this particular version would seem to be Eknath Easwaran’s introduction to his translation of the Dhammapada, which itself is the source of a number of Fake Buddha Quotes. Here’s the relevant portion of the introduction:

Someone once asked the Buddha skeptically, “What have you gained through meditation.”

The Buddha replied, “Nothing at all.”

“Then, Blessed One, what good is it.”

“Let me tell you what I lost through meditation: sickness, anger, depression, insecurity, the burden of old age, the fear of death. That is the good of meditation, which leads to nirvana.”

That was first published in 1985.

That in turn seems to be based on something published in 1973 — World Buddhism, Volume 22 — by the World Fellowship of Buddhists.

It may be stating the case too strongly to say that in meditation one seeks to gain nothing. For theres is an increase in happiness and peace of mind. But when asked, “What have you gained from meditation?”, the answer would be: “It is not what I have gained that is important but rather what I have diminished, namely, greed, hatred, and delusion.”

This is clearly not the Buddha who is supposed to be speaking, but simply a hypothetical meditator.

The quote — as indicated — is found in a number of forms on various blogs as well as in a few books. One book attempts to make the quote a bit more similar to the style of the Pali canon by throwing in a “blessed one”:

Someone once asked the Buddha: “What have you gained through meditation?” The Buddha replied, “Nothing at all.”

“Then, Blessed One, what good is it?”

The Buddha said: “Let me tell you what I have lost in meditation: sickness, depression…

It would have been better also to have reverted to the traditional “greed, hatred, and delusion” that World Buddhism used, especially given that the Buddha was hardly immune to sickness, and in fact died of food poisoning.

Someone posted the following on Google+, and before I had a chance to look it up it had already been debunked by Andy Rickford:

The Buddha told his student, ‘Every morning I drink from my favorite teacup. I hold it in my hands and feel the warmth of the cup from the hot liquid it contains. I breathe in the aroma of my tea and enjoy my mornings in this way. But in my mind the teacup is already broken.’

You’ll find this on a lot of blogs (although no books — yet) and I suspect it came from Heartbeats, where Camille introduces the story and then says “This is a story I first heard a few years ago and I refer to it whenever I feel the pull towards becoming too attached to anything or anyone.”

This is obviously not the Buddha. Teacups? In India 2,500 years ago? It seems Camille has misremembered an example of impermanence that Ajahn Chah was fond of recounting, which Andy kindly excavated:

Before saying a word, he [Ajahn Chah] motioned to a glass at his side. “Do you see this glass?” he asked us. “I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”

It’s a beautiful story and a beautiful teaching that’s full in line with the Buddha’s teaching. But it’s not the Buddha.

This is from Dwight Goddard, an early 20th century popularizer of Buddhist texts. It’s a rendering, apparently, of Dhammapada verse 21, which Buddharakkhita has as

Heedfulness is the path to the Deathless.
Heedlessness is the path to death.
The heedful die not.
The heedless are as if dead already.

Buddharakkhita’s translation is very literal.

In his drive to popularize Buddhist teachings, Goddard was keen to make Buddhism sound more Christian, hence his “Buddhist Bible” and the change from “path to death” (maccuno padaṃ) to “short road to death” is no doubt meant to evoke Matthew 7:13–14, which reads:

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

The term “idle” also appeals to Christians, with the religion’s emphasis on “good works.” “Diligence” or “heedfulness” (appamāda) is more of an internal attitude of watchful mindfulness, and while it may lead to external good works its function is to protect the mind against unskillfulness.

So this is one of these occasions where the Fake Buddha Quote arises because of a distorted — in this case, perhaps, deliberately distorted — translation.

The Fake Quote is found on quotes sites, and in dozens of books, mostly of the New Age or self-help varieties.

This is from what the publishers term Thomas Byrom’s “rendering” of the Dhammapada. The word “rendering” is a dead giveaway. Normally texts in a foreign language are “translated.” I’m not sure that Byrom actually knew any Pali, though, and there’s no sign that he translated the text. I’d guess what he did is look at various translations, and with the Pali dictionary in hand, concocted a poetic — and impressionistic — work that is called “The Dhammapada” but which bears little resemblance to the original. The best I can say about it is that it’s pretty.

This quote:

“Meditate. Live purely. Quiet the mind. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.”

is from the end of the 25th chapter, the Bhikkhu Vagga (“Chapter of the Monk,” which Byrom “renders” as “The Seeker”) and the start of the 26th Chapter, the Brāhmaṇa Vagga (“Chapter of the Brahmin,” which Byrom renders as “The True Master”).

Meditate.
Live purely.
Quiet the mind.
Do your work with mastery

corresponds to verse 386, for which Narada Thera, a fairly literal translator, has:

He who is meditative, stainless and
secluded, he who has done his duty and is free
from corruptions, he who has attained the
Highest Goal—him I call a brāhmaṇa.

You’ll note that some of the words are similar — “meditative/meditate,” “purely/stainless,” for example — but Byrom ignores the grammatical arrangement of the words, turning them into a series of “imperative” instructions. But there is grammar in the original, and it actually means something. And he misses a lot out. Byrom’s poetry is lovely, but it’s not the Dhammapada.

The second part is actually from an earlier verse, which in context Byrom has as:

However young,
The seeker who sets out upon the way
Shines bright over the world.
Like the moon,
Come out from behind the clouds! Shine.

Here’s Narada’s translation of verse 382:

The bhikkhu who, while still young,
devotes himself to the Buddha’s Teaching,
illumines this world like the moon freed from
a cloud.

Again, Byrom seems to have looked at the dictionary and made something up. He even managed to miss out the term “The Buddha’s teaching,” which in the Pali original is “buddhasasana.”

It’s a peculiar thing that someone who doesn’t know a language is asked to “render” a work into English. You wonder what the publishers are thinking. This isn’t the only time this has happened with the Dhammapada, incidentally. The English Buddhist Anne Bancroft also produced a “rendering,” of the Dhammapada, and together she and Byrom have contributed many Fake Buddhist Quotes to humanity. It’s as if “it’s only spirituality” and so what the scriptures actually say isn’t really important. As long as it’s “poetic” and “inspirational,” that’s OK. The problem with this approach is that the Dharma is actually an instruction manual on how to get from point A to point B. If your instruction manual has been “rendered” into English from another language — like the Chinese instructions following, they may not be terribly useful.

I’d seen this quote around, but someone asked me about it on Twitter yesterday, which prompted me to write it up. Although it’s quoted all over the internet, and in at least one book, as being the words of the Buddha, it’s not a scriptural quotation, and is intead from Jack Kornfield’s lovely book from 1994, Buddha’s Little Instruction Book (page 85). It’s a great book, and I’d highly recommend it. Some of the quotes are based on material from the suttas, but usually re-written, and most of the material seems to be Jack’s own thoughts.

As the blurb to the book explains,

For this small handbook, a well-known American Buddhist and psychologist has distilled and adapted an ancient teaching for the needs of contemporary life. (Emphasis added.)

Jack may have modelled this saying on a passage in Danielle Marie’s 1992 Straight From the Heart: Authors, Celebrities & Others Share Their Philosophies on Making a Difference in the World.

I don’t have the book, and Google gives only limited access, so I can’t see which particular author or celebrity wrote these words, but he or she speculated that, rather than what car we bought or whether we got rid of our cellulite,

I imagine that God would ask, “How well did you love? How much joy did you create in the people around you? How much did you love and appreciate yourself, your body, and your own special gift? How many hearts did you touch? (page 95)

The similarity may be a coincidence, however.

Giveways that this is not a genuine quote from the scriptures? The whole thing is too neat compared to the rather repetitive language used in most of the Pali canon, the Buddha isn’t recorded talked in terms of how fully people lived their lives, or how well they loved — these are rather contemporary idioms — and although the language of “letting go” is used in the canon, it’s rather rare. When added to the two other, more modern expressions of “loving well” and “living fully,” the whole suggests a contemporary and western rather than an ancient and Indian source.