Chinese sayings: 25 (借花獻佛)

借花獻佛 / 借花献佛

jiè huā xiàn fó

“borrow flower to-present-to buddha”

This saying (from 過去現在因果經, a Buddhist scripture in the 南朝宋 Nán Cháo Sòng period, 420–479 AD) is about using other people’s things (flowers in this case) to present to the buddha in the temple.  One dictionary says:  “win favor or influence using sb else's property”.

    An illustration comes to mind.

    When I was working on a TV documentary series for Channel 4 back in the 80s, the administrator’s secretary told her boss that she had too much to do and needed a junior to help out.  (She also asked for more pay saying she was a single mother with two children.  I thought to myself, “Well then, given that I’m single with no children, no pets, and no car, I should perhaps be working for free in that case, according to her logic.  Nobody asked her to have two children if she couldn’t afford them.”  So, she wanted more pay for doing less work.)

    A young assistant was duly found, and given all the menial tasks, e.g., make tea/coffee, do the photocopying.

    One day, one of the film directors asked the administrative secretary for photocopies to be made of a film script.  The secretary gave the task to the young assistant — fair enough, that was what the junior was employed for.  Once the photocopies had been made, however, instead of letting the junior take them directly to the film director, which would’ve been the most logical and effort-saving (which was, after all, why the junior was employed in the first place, according to the administrative secretary: to save her work), the older woman took them from the junior and personally delivered them to the film director, going all the way to his room ("Here you are, David, your copies done!"), which made it look like she’d done the work herself.  

    This is what 借花獻佛 refers to: borrowing [someone else’s] flowers to present to the buddha.

(London, 1983)