SuttaCentral
It is an interesting one. There was an article about it by AK Warder, I think? It’s been a while! Maybe someone else will know? @dhammanando @Bodhipaksa
But basically the idea is that it started out as “whatever is spoken by the Buddha is well-spoken”, then gradually became “whatever is well-spoken is spoken by the Buddha”. With obvious implications, especially for the development of the Mahayana, but in Theravada as well.
I wrote about that saying here: The Buddha on Fake Buddha Quotes (1) - Fake Buddha Quotes
TL;DR. It was originally like saying. “Whatever is helpful in this book should be credited to my teachers. The faults are all mine.” It wasn’t saying that anything that anyone said, if well said, could be regarded as the word of the Buddha.
Yes as @Bodhipaksa notes, AN 8.8 involves Ven. Uttara who seems to be coming up with a dhamma teaching on his own. When asked as to its source, he replies that “whatever is well spoken is spoken by the Blessed One, the perfected one, the fully awakened Buddha.”
This at least appears to allow for the creation of new teachings as the word of the Buddha so long as they are “well spoken”.
I have to say I read the sutta completely differently.
There’s no indication anywhere, as far as I’m aware, of the Buddha holding the view that anything that’s well-said can be attributed to him.
Uttara gives a teaching and when asked about its origin he says that it’s like grain taken from a grain pile (i.e. it is the Buddha’s teaching). We then see the Buddha repeating the same words Uttara spoke, and adding to them. And then Uttara is asked to memorize this expanded teaching.
I took it that Uttara is in fact teaching something he’s heard from the Buddha, rather than him coming up with a Dharma teaching on his own. The Buddha is invariably scathing if someone quotes him wrongly or puts words in his mouth, and he doesn’t do that here. I take the Buddha’s using the same words as Uttara to confirm that what Uttara had taught was a indeed quote from the Buddha.
With that in mind, I take Uttara’s comment that “whatever is well said is the word of the Buddha” to be a form of modest attribution. In other words he’s saying “the well-spoken words I have uttered are the Buddha’s” rather than “Any well-spoken words can be credited to the Buddha.” The last statement makes no sense in terms of what we know about the Buddha’s often-expressed concern for the preservation of his teaching in a verbatim form.
I think it can be read in various ways. For example in a footnote to this passage, Bhante Bodhi writes,
As stated, it expresses the idea that whatever good teachings the disciples speak, even when they themselves have originated them, can be regarded as buddhavacana because they are based on the Buddha’s own teachings. (Numerical Discourses, p. 1791n1627).
Another similar passage is in AN 8.53 where Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī asks the Buddha for a short dhamma teaching. The Buddha basically tells her that whatever leads to dispassion, fewer desires, contentment, seclusion, (etc.) “are the teaching, the training, and the Teacher’s instructions.” I think once again one way to read this is that “the Teacher’s instructions” include more than simply the actual words he has spoken, but can include our own instructions so long as they lead to the same skillful ends and are therefore relevantly “well-spoken”.
That’s the way that makes sense to me.
To me, that seems like a very dangerous path to head down.
Indeed. No wonder we are all still here, most of us completely unawakened, 2,500 years after a fully awakened Buddha passed by, and stayed and taught for so long…
It’s exactly that slippery slope to leads to bogus translations and transmissions, all only serving to perpetuate confusion, disinformation, perplexity and rebirth…
Hence the tragicomedy of samsara… 
It’s a great example of motivated reasoning that I completely forgot about that teaching to Mahāpajāpatī, despite having quoted it many times. If Bhikkhu Bodhi’s understanding of what Uttara says is correct, and mine is wrong (the most likely option) then we have two examples (maybe there are others) of teachings suggesting it’s OK to put words in the Buddha’s mouth, but many more examples where the Buddha says that’s not OK.
If I’m understanding Uttara correctly, and Bhikkhu Bodhi is understanding him incorrectly (who knows, maybe that could happen!), then we might have just one example.
The Mahāpajāpatī passage is fascinating, but I realize I’m very suspicious of anything that appears to say that you can essentially just make it up as you go along, when that’s very much not what the Buddha’s general approach was. This is something I need to reflect on, because it’s not sitting easy with me.
I’ll of course discover certain things I can do in meditation or in life that aren’t included in the Buddha’s teachings, but are helpful at stilling the mind and making me kinder. And those things strike me as “dhammic.” They’re aligned with the Buddha’s Dhamma as a set of principles, but I’d never say “This is what the Buddha taught” because that’s simply not true. Maybe the issue is that the word “Dhamma” being so infamously multivalent, we get into trouble when we shift from Dhamma as “underlying spiritual principles” to Dhamma as “specific instructions of the Buddha.”
Me too. I don’t think this passage should be read to indicate “anything goes” though. It’s a very specific set of instructions given to an advanced practitioner.
I certainly don’t agree with false translations or “fake Buddha quotes”! 
Yes!
Right, but we can see how the meaning can gradually slip. It’s not just a matter of someone deciding, “Today I will destroy Buddhism by counterfeiting the teachings!” It’s gradual. And that’s why, sometimes, there has to be a line in the sand.
Precisely. This is why it’s important to understand the Pāli and not get too caught up on the connotations of English translations.
This sutta is obviously just a compass for guiding our hermeneutics - that is to say, when we’re trying to understand the Buddha’s words, how can we know if we’re understanding it correctly or if our understanding is being twisted by delusion and motivated reasoning.
Because that’s the sutta’s goal, it’s a bit ironic (inevitable?) that it becomes a target for misreading.
Agreed. This was an interesting thing that evolved during my translation work. I always try to follow what I call the “principle of least meaning”, which essentially means to translate in the simplest, most obvious, and thinnest way possible per context. Since “teachings” is a “thin” translation compared to the philosophically pregnant “underlying spriritual principles” or whatever, I tended to translate dhammā as “teachings” unless a more subtle meaning was required by the context. And I found, to my my surprise, that such contexts were fairly rare. Not non-existent, to be sure, but in most cases you can translate “teachings” and it works just fine.
I definitely think there’s a tendency to imbue the word dhamma with more meaning, and the temptation to do that is one of the key differentiators between a teaching who sees their role as conveying the “teachings”, and one who sees their role as interpreting “the way things are”. Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter for a spiritual teacher per se, but as a translator, i want to know the difference.
Thank you to all who contributed to this slightly tangential thread stemming from my query.
This indeed makes the most sense to me: not only based on “the Buddha’s often-expressed concern” mentioned above, but also in light of the discourse itself–specifically, Inda’s reaction; which is typical of discourses where an interlocutor remarks on how a disciple’s response to a question mirrors one previously given by the Buddha (or, the other way around). I think teachings being transmitted verbatim is certainly the emphasis here.
An inspiring and edifying discourse all around. Thank you for the clarification.
I absolutely agree! Couldn’t help but think of Malunkyaputta in MN 64 who made a (seemingly) inconsequential mistake while enumerating the five lower fetters and got thoroughly rebuked for it!
Venerable sir, I remember identity view as a lower fetter taught by the Blessed One. I remember doubt as a lower fetter taught by the Blessed One. I remember adherence to rules and observances as a lower fetter taught by the Blessed One. I remember sensual desire as a lower fetter taught by the Blessed One. I remember ill will as a lower fetter taught by the Blessed One. It is in this way, venerable sir, that I remember the five lower fetters as taught by the Blessed One.”
“Mālunkyāputta, to whom do you remember my having taught these five lower fetters in that way?
I had to read it thrice and reflect on it to spot the error! The Buddha was certainly not OK with misinterpreted teachings!
I had to read the rest of the sutta. I love the baby stuff as a reminder of the difference between an underlying tendency and an actual habit. But I’m still having to take some deep breaths so that I can try to convince myself the Buddha wasn’t just being picky!
It’s probably rooted in passages outside of Theravada. I can think of the lengthy discussion of whether the Buddha was the author (and whether it matters if he was or not) in the introduction of the Mahavibhasa and the citation of the Vinaya definition of Dharma in the Dazhidulun (which is much broader than just the Buddha’s words and appears to be fairly universal across sectarian vinayas).
Also, I would like to point out that the verbatim words of the Buddha don’t actually exist anymore. What people convince themselves is the word of the Buddha is a version handed down by generations of disciples that changed the wording and created brand new sutras over the course of a couple thousand years. It’s unfortunate to me that people cling to words because they aren’t able or willing to learn to discern what’s wise and what isn’t, instead hoping an external source can do it for them. This is how we end up with a vinaya that torments women who try to be monastics and everything else that creeps in and becomes codified that isn’t wise. Can stop worrying about slippery slopes when we already half way down the slide?
The only thing that actually matters is the preservation of wisdom, which is meaning carried by words. The rest is dried ink and exhaled breath.
I expressed a similar sentiment in another thread recently. I think that as deluded samsaric beings, Buddhists of each tradition tend to fail to embody the Buddhadhamma in different ways. In Theravada, there’s a lot of obeying the letter but not the spirit of the Dhamma. A few years ago I visited a monastery in America that was part of a Thai forest tradition, but not one of Ajahn Cha’s branch monasteries. I mentioned to some of the lay people staying in that monastery that I had spent time in some Ajahn Cha monasteries. I got responses along the line of “Well, it’s good you’re here now. You really dodged a bullet.” I didn’t react or ask what they meant by that, but later the American monk who founded that monastery, and was its abbot, said the same thing. He elaborated a bit, and started talking about some really minor point of vinaya related to how food is stored. Anyway, after that experience it became really easy to see how sectarianism ended up flourishing in Buddhism, and why so many different schools developed even a few hundred years after the Buddha’s parinibbana.
Freud would have fun with that.
Today I learned.
Years ago at a Sangha conference, I mentioned in passing the website “Buddhism and Vampires”. It was a tantric thing about harnessing inner shadow and so on. But it took the Theravadin monks approximately zero minutes to raise the all-important question: if a vampire became a monk—which they couldn’t but just hypothetically—could they drink blood after midday?
A
Judean People’s Front
Vs
People’s Front of Judaea
dilemma plaguing all organized groups, religious or otherwise.