Here’s another version of our Golden Rule that I heard recently. A sheikh was asked for a loan, so he borrowed money in order to give the loan. Incredulously, his student asked why he would do such a thing, and he simply replied: ” I do not give in the way I want to give, I give in the way one asks to be given.”

So I ask you then, vis a vis the Year of Sagely Living concept, what are the practices that you would pursue to embody these words of wisdom?

That’s a great point and one not lost on me for sure. I think ultimately we could look at it either way (what I want DONE to me is for someone to preserve my Yang, to take my physiology into account, to think about my long term interests, etc) but the original way of stating it does preserve those interpretations more cleanly.

Anyway – great comment, welcome back, and don’t ever leave for so long again. :)

Eric

One very significant aspect of the message from Kongzi for me is his use of negation. In the west we say “DO unto others as you would wish to have DONE to you”, yet Kongzi very specifically said “Don’t Do….” I felt that Dr. Liu also was emphasizing this in his message of the Boddhisattva Way of medicine, for seemed most interested in not harming the body, not damaging Yang. This is an important message to practitioners for it tells us that there is much we should not do, and that what we should do is very little and needs much care and consideration. The first rule in naturopathy is to first, Do No Harm; this again is saying, “The first thing we should do, is to not do.” In the west we are very quick to act, quicky to treat, quick to fix the problems we see; perhaps we could learn from the Boddhisattva and from the Daoists (through the practice of “Not-making become” or Wu Wei)and from Kongzi by focusing on what Not to do first, not to harm, not to do what we would not want, not to damage the body’s yang, and from there moving towards what To do.
Michael