I’d seen this one a lot on Twitter, recently. It’s fake.
To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.
It’s not from the Buddha, but from a Japanese book called The Teaching of Buddha. Titles such as this do tend to lead to confusion.
The Teaching of Buddha is the Japanese Buddhist equivalent of the Gideon Bible, except that the Gideon Bible can be taken as, you know, Gospel, while the Japanese book, as far as I’m aware doesn’t contain any Buddhist scriptures. I’m just about to order a copy, so I’ll soon find out. Several other Fake Buddha Quotes come from this book, and I’m curious to take a look at it. So far all I’ve seen is snippets on Google Books.
Here’s an example from Twitter.
To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.~Buddha
— Judy Cousens (@JudyCousens) July 1, 2012
Greetings Bodhipaksa,
I actually have this book! Interestingly, instead of translators who will have the Pali or Sanskrit on the right-sided page, with their translation on the left-sided page… my version of this book has English on one side, and Spanish on the other.
I was at a hotel in Mexico and right next to the Gideon’s Bibb;e was this book., I asked the hotel about it, and they said I could have it, that they are distributed freely to hotels, JUST like Gideon’s Bibles. So, just think about that! Some wealthy Japanese (Pure Land Buddhist, I would gather from what I have read) are Spreading “their Dharma” all around the world. I have NOT read much of the book, because it did not resonate with me as useful Dharma. I “assumed” it must be a situation where the Japanese to English was poorly translated (just as it often occurs in fortune cookies, or assembling instructions, etc), but now reading your commentary, I am going to reexamine it, and try to determine more of it’s accuracy, for myself.
So, they started with Ananda’s verbal transmission of the Dhamma, from Bhikkhu to Bhikkhu for how long? Say ≈ 200-300 years , then translated from Shakyamuni’s dialect, into Palī, then somehow the Chinese Canon was discovered… then to Japan, then into English, then to Spanish…. I am amazed it doesn’t sound more like Dr Seuss!
:~)) __/|\__ Sadhuvad, my dear Dharma Brother and kalyana mitra. This is a WONDErFUL service you’re providing! Sadhu!
With Metta & Satī,
Dharma Mitra Jeff Stefani
I must have a differant copy as mine references pali canon
That’s interesting, Richard. They reference that quote to the Pali canon? Can you tell me what the reference is? I may have to correct this, and other, FBQ entries!
To be fair, quotes not from Theravada might well be considered genuine Buddha Vacana by the respective groups.
Hi, Pandit Bhikkhu.
It’s certainly the case that the Mahayana Sutras, which are not literally Buddhavacana, would be considered genuine by those schools, but when a quote can be sourced to an origin outside of the Buddhist tradition altogether there’s not much basis for considering it to be in any sense genuine.