The Golden Rule

 

Positive Version:

Always treat all others as you would like to be treated yourself.

Negative Version:

Don’t do to others, what you would not like them to do to you.

Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain, and then refuse to inflict that pain on anyone else.

 

Compassion works. Confusious said implement the golden rule all day every day: you dethrone yourself from the center of your world, put another there, and you transcend yourself. It brings you into the presence of what’s being called God. Something that goes beyond what we know in our ego-bound existence.

We need to manage the golden rule globally. Build a global society where people can live together in peace.

Golden rule is the source of all morality. Great imaginative act of empathy, putting yourself in the place of another.

Rabbi Hillel , older contemporary of Jesus, was asked by a pagan to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching “that which is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor, that is the Torah and everything else is commentary”.

Compassion lies at the root of all art. Compassion at the centrality of all religions.

C.S.Lewis in “The Four loves”:

Erotic Love: When two people gaze spell-bound into each other’s eyes.

Friendship: When two people stand side by side with their eyes fixed on a common goal.

We don’t have to fall in love with each other, but we can become friends. When people of all different persuasions come together working side by side for a common goal, differences meld away, and we learn amity and we learn to live together and to get to know one another.

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“Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself.” This was one of the guiding principles of life that Confucius taught his followers, five centuries before Jesus taught the Golden Rule with similar words.

It serves as a directive to treat others as one does oneself. The Golden Rule differs from the maxim of reciprocity captured in do ut des – “I give so that you will give in return” – but rather a unilateral moral commitment to the well-being of the other without the expectation of anything in return.^[3]

The concept occurs in some form in nearly every religion^[4][5] and ethical tradition.^[6] It can also be explained from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, sociology, and economics. Psychologically, it involves a personempathizing with others. Philosophically, it involves a person perceiving their neighbor also as “I” or “self”.^[7] Sociologically, ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ is applicable between individuals, between groups, and also between individuals and groups. In economics, Richard Swift, referring to ideas from David Graeber, suggests that “without some kind of reciprocity society would no longer be able to exist.” ^[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule

The saying of Hillel which introduces the collection of his maxims in the Mishnaic treatise Abot mentions Aaron as the great model to be imitated in his love of peace, in his love of man, and in his leading mankind to a knowledge of the Law (Ab. i. 12). In mentioning these characteristics, which the Haggadah then already ascribed to Moses’ brother, Hillel mentions his own most prominent virtues. Love of man was considered by Hillel as the kernel of the entire Jewish teaching. When a heathen who wished to become a Jew asked him for a summary of the Jewish religion in the most concise terms, Hillel said: “What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law; the rest is mere commentary” (Shab. 31a).

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7698-hillel

Here lies the root of Good and Evil.