In Proverbs: "If thine enemy be hungry give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty give him water to drink."
In the Talmud it is written: "Do not unto others that which it would be disagreeable to you to suffer yourself; that is the main part of the law."
We have the same idea expressed by Christ: "All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." Sextus, a teacher of Epictetus, said: "What you wish your neighbours to be to you, such be also to them."
Isocrates said: "Act towards others as you desire others to act towards you."
King Asoka said: "I consider the welfare of all people as something for which I must work."
THE BEGINNINGS OF MORALS
In the Buddhist "Kathâ Sarit Sâgara" it is written: "Why should we cling to this perishable body? In the eye of the wise the only thing it is good for is to benefit one's fellow creatures." And another Buddhist author expresses the same idea with still more force and beauty: "Full of love for all things in the world, practising virtue in order to benefit others—this man alone is happy."
But even when the moralists did not lay down the "Golden Rule," they taught that the cause of sin and of suffering was selfishness; and they spoke strongly against self-pity, and self-love, and self-aggrandisement.
What is the lesson of Buddha, and of the Indian, Persian, and Greek moralists? Buddha went out into the world to search for the cause of human sin and sorrow. He found the cause to be self-indulgence and the cure to be self-conquest. "The cause of pain," he said, "is desire." And this lesson was repeated over and over again by Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Plutarch, and Seneca..
The moral is that selfishness is bad, and unselfishness is good. And this moral is backed by the almost universal practice of all men in all ages and of all races in testing or weighing the virtue or the value of any person's conduct.