"once you feel you are avoided by someone never disturb them again"
December 2, 2020 3:35 PM Subscribe
I've run across this quote a few times recently, at times attributed to the Buddha and at times to anonymous. Assuming it is correctly attributed to the Buddha, could someone supply the original source so it can be encountered in context? Also very welcome would be secondary sources discussing its significance.
To me, it sounds for all the world like somebody trying to co-opt Maya Angelou's "Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option" without giving her credit, with a perhaps a smidge of her "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
posted by kimota at 4:04 PM on December 2, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by kimota at 4:04 PM on December 2, 2020 [4 favorites]
Searching "avoided disturb quote -buddha" gives a ton of results just attributing this quote to anonymous, but nothing pointing to a specific source that I could find.
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:53 PM on December 2, 2020
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:53 PM on December 2, 2020
I posted a jokey version of this reply that got deleted for being too jokey. So let me try a more serious version: if there is a quote that is widely circulated on the internet, attributed to a famously wise person (Buddha, Lincoln, Einstein), and never associated with a specific source, it is almost certainly a misattribution. It seem exceedingly unlikely that this is a quote from the Buddha.
posted by ManInSuit at 7:50 PM on December 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by ManInSuit at 7:50 PM on December 2, 2020 [3 favorites]
If your presence causes suffering for someone, why would you seek to be in their presence? Seeking to be in their mind is seeking to cause them suffering... that's pretty evil.
Buddhism (at least the small boat version) tends to the non-prosthelytizing. The work is not changing some other, but changing yourself. Avoid being in situations that cause yourself or the other suffering. The big boat version tends to be the organized prosthelytizing religion sort with priests and monks and scriptures and rituals, blah blah blah. There one would impose themselves on another causing them suffering while attempting to guide them out.
posted by zengargoyle at 8:34 PM on December 2, 2020
Buddhism (at least the small boat version) tends to the non-prosthelytizing. The work is not changing some other, but changing yourself. Avoid being in situations that cause yourself or the other suffering. The big boat version tends to be the organized prosthelytizing religion sort with priests and monks and scriptures and rituals, blah blah blah. There one would impose themselves on another causing them suffering while attempting to guide them out.
posted by zengargoyle at 8:34 PM on December 2, 2020
I did some research for some writing which required a number of Buddha quotes.
To cut it short, there aren't any. Nothing he said was written down for four centuries after his time, and that was over two thousand years ago. I was unable to find a serious scholar who believed that any actual statements survived that. Buddhists accept certain sayings as being not so much original as official.
The statement in question is obviously modern. People millennia back didn't worry about how genuine their friends were, or who paid them attention or didn't initiate social contact. Careful analysis of friendships is a recent thing.
'Buddha' quotes come from various sources, but at least half of the ones I found are by G. K. Chesterton. I'm sure he didn't write this one.
(I don't usually include disclaimers, because I think it's intellectually dishonest, but my reading left me with the impression that Siddhartha Gautama was a very intelligent and humane person, someone I'd like to have met. Chesterton was of the same type, very funny, incisive, and penetrating, but if you're sensitive or easily offended ... I'd leave him alone.)
posted by AugustusCrunch at 10:23 PM on December 2, 2020 [6 favorites]
To cut it short, there aren't any. Nothing he said was written down for four centuries after his time, and that was over two thousand years ago. I was unable to find a serious scholar who believed that any actual statements survived that. Buddhists accept certain sayings as being not so much original as official.
The statement in question is obviously modern. People millennia back didn't worry about how genuine their friends were, or who paid them attention or didn't initiate social contact. Careful analysis of friendships is a recent thing.
'Buddha' quotes come from various sources, but at least half of the ones I found are by G. K. Chesterton. I'm sure he didn't write this one.
(I don't usually include disclaimers, because I think it's intellectually dishonest, but my reading left me with the impression that Siddhartha Gautama was a very intelligent and humane person, someone I'd like to have met. Chesterton was of the same type, very funny, incisive, and penetrating, but if you're sensitive or easily offended ... I'd leave him alone.)
posted by AugustusCrunch at 10:23 PM on December 2, 2020 [6 favorites]
It sounded a touch like the practice of accepting defeat / offer the victory
8 verses of training the mind.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:16 AM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]
8 verses of training the mind.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:16 AM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]
The blog Fake Buddha Quotes has a lot of good discussion about how to tell whether a particular quote is even possibly authentic, or whether it can be dismissed at sight as a fake Buddha quote. Based on what I've learned from the blog and what Buddhist texts I've read, this is definitely not a Buddha quote.
Here's an interview with him in Tricycle magazine about how to spot fake Buddha quotes: Did I Say That? In his new book, Bodhipaksa shares his methods for spotting viral online Buddha quotes that the Buddha definitely never said. One thing he points out is that the early Buddhist scriptures "tend to be clunky and repetitive in style as a result of both the peculiarities of Pali and Sanskrit grammar and the fact that the teachings were originally passed down orally."
posted by Lexica at 11:23 AM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]
Here's an interview with him in Tricycle magazine about how to spot fake Buddha quotes: Did I Say That? In his new book, Bodhipaksa shares his methods for spotting viral online Buddha quotes that the Buddha definitely never said. One thing he points out is that the early Buddhist scriptures "tend to be clunky and repetitive in style as a result of both the peculiarities of Pali and Sanskrit grammar and the fact that the teachings were originally passed down orally."
posted by Lexica at 11:23 AM on December 3, 2020 [2 favorites]
@augustus crunch, I’m curious how you can be so certain how people felt millennia ago.
posted by lometogo at 4:41 AM on December 9, 2020
posted by lometogo at 4:41 AM on December 9, 2020
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posted by less of course at 3:57 PM on December 2, 2020 [4 favorites]