Einstein and Buddhism, The Elusive Quote
Shubha Bala, associate producer
A listener, Russell, e-mailed the other day saying he had been on his own sleuthing expedition expedition to find the original source of an Einstein quote about Buddhism being the cosmic religion of the future. It was referenced in the Particulars section of our show “The Buddha in the World.” He had come up empty-handed and wrote to ask if we knew where the quote came from.
Well, as Nancy’s previous post indicates, many a producer has been challenged by sorting out Einstein’s misquotes from original quotes. So have many other quote detectives. This quote seems to be a good example of how misquoting gets propagated so quickly on the web. Many sites with the quote source this site, which leads to a dead-end since it attributes it only Albert Einstein. Some people source books — Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das and All the Questions You Ever Wanted to Ask American Atheists, Vol II by Madalyn Murray O’Hair — but those books do not source the quotes either.
The best conclusion is this response from the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem:
“The quote under discussion which I know is quite ‘popular’, could so far paraphrase of some ideas Einstein developed in an essay titled “Religion and Science” in 1930. Here he mentions the “cosmic religiosity” (not religion!), Buddhism, and a belief that avoids dogma and theology.”
