So, this morning I was curious about any other articles Mr. Peterson might've cobbled together using the keyword 'siddhartha'. I googled 'site:deseretnews.com + peterson + siddhartha' and got these hits:
https://www.deseret.com/platform/amp/20 ... ate-buddhahttps://www.deseret.com/2018/9/29/20654 ... umar-singhhttps://www.deseret.com/2019/2/15/20666 ... avan-indiadated September 5, 2013, Sep 29, 2018, and Feb 15, 2019 respectively.
From the
2013 article Mr. Peterson doesn't take long to get right to his uncredited use of this source:
https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Gautama_BuddhaQuote:
The word Buddha means "awakened one" or "the enlightened one". "Buddha" is also used as a title for the first awakened being in an era. In most Buddhist traditions, Siddhartha Gautama is regarded as the Supreme Buddha (Pali sammāsambuddha, Sanskrit samyaksaṃbuddha) of our age.
From his Deseret News piece:
Quote:
“Buddha” is a title, meaning “enlightened” or “awakened” in the ancient Pali language in which much of the Buddhist canon was written.
Remember. Mr. Peterson isn't some polymath who has such a vast repository of Buddhist teachings in his head that he'd inadvertently wordsmith a phrase together that just so happens to mirror the same elements in the wiki article. This is important to remember for the Peter$on apologists who, for some unknown reason, can't fathom how or why he'd do something like that over and over and over and over and over again.
Moving on, if you read the article and then compare and contrast against the linked wiki article you basically see how he just rewrote what's there. He does a good job of using his own words, but the ideas flow in order of the wiki article, and it's obvious he's just doing a rewrite. Here's just one example of many I could provide from the Deseret News piece:
Quote:
He spent the next 45 years, until his death in the late fifth century BC, as a wandering teacher in India, serving humanity, forming Buddhist communities and teaching mankind the path to enlightenment.
contrasted against the wiki article:
Quote:
The Buddha spent the rest of his life traveling throughout northeastern India and teaching the path of awakening he had discovered. He died at the age of 80 (note: in the wiki article it mentions Buddha is 35 when he makes his spiritual breakthrough, so Peterson just does the math here) in Kushinagar, India.
Anyway. The whole Deseret News article follows a thorough plagiarism of the wiki article, just rewritten in his words with no accreditation whatsoever. It's too onerous for me to sit here and parse out all the similarities (
bolding and
highlighting the
similar words and phrases), idea-stealing, and demonstrating the flow of both articles when you can just read the two and see it for yourselves. Its' taken me half an hour to do just this little workup, and I don't have the energy to construct a Lemmian or Tomian takedown.
- Doc