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Golden Rules

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Introduction to the Golden Rules

    From the time I was about five or six years old my mother taught me this version of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others, kind and true, as you would have others do unto you.” I confess that I didn’t always treat others this way, but I could understand the concept at about that age. Treat others the way you want to be treated.
    When my brother, whom I have always dearly loved, and I would get into a tangle she would ask me, “Would you like it if he did that to you?” or to him, “How do you think that feels to her?” It became the standard code of ethics of the house. I learned by about age nine that the root of it was in The Bible  (Luke 6:31). But it wasn’t until I was in my forties that I realized that the major world religions each had a golden rule, and their unique way of stating it.
    I used the different golden rules in the Anger Management classes I taught at
Hale ‘Opio Kaua’i Teen Court. I told the children of a time long ago before police forces and huge courts and jails. Back then, the wisest were selected to be council members. The elders guided the younger in how to live with each other. The golden rule was the spoken or unspoken law of the land.
    If you choose, you may use these questions to deepen your thought about how life might be if we remembered to live by the Golden Rules:

1.    After reading all the Golden Rules, write one in your own words that you would like people to live by.
2.    What would the world look like if people lived by these rules?
3.    What would the world feel like? What could you do that you might not be able to do now? [Because there is a juvenile curfew on Kaua’i, all the kids thought that they could stay out late, because they would be safe.]
4.    What do you think is keeping people from living by these rules?
5.    What would it take to inspire people to live by these rules?
6.    What is one thing you can do to help make it happen? Because dear one, you matter, and you can make a difference. Remember that the words have been around for eons. We used to live by them, and we can again, but the words will have to be lived.
    
    



Christian Golden Rule

“And as ye would that men should
do to you, do ye also to them.”
Luke 6:41  King James Version



Taoist Golden Rule

Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain,
And your neighbor’s loss as your loss.
T’ai Shang Kan Yin P ‘ie



Sikh Golden Rule

No one is my enemy, none a stranger,
And everyone is my friend.
Guru Arjan Dev: AG 1299



Confucian Golden Rule

“Do not do to others what
you do not want them to do to you.”
Analects 15:23
 
 
Hindu Golden Rule

“This is the sum of duty:
Do not do to others what would cause pain
if done to you.”
Mahabharata 5:1517


Native American Golden Rule

“All things are our relatives;
What we do to everything, we do to ourselves.
All is really one.”
Black Elk


Islamic Golden Rule

None of  you [truly] believes until
He wishes for his brother
What he wishes for himself.
#13 of Imam “Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths.”
 

Baha ‘i  Golden Rule

“And if thine eyes be turned towards justice,
Choose thou for thy
Neighbor that which thou choosest for thyself.”
Epistle to the Son of the Wolf



Zoroastrian Golden Rule

Whatever is disagreeable to yourself,
Do not do unto others.
Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29



Buddhist Golden Rule

“Hurt not others in ways that you yourself
would find hurtful”
Udana Vocga 5:18



Jewish Golden Rule

Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as Thyself.
Leviticus 19:18
 
 
 
Jainist Golden Rule
 
A man should wander about treating
All creatures as he himself would be treated.
       Sutrakritanga  1.11.33



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