The Golden Rule of Mercy

The reason why, since the beginning of time,

we could speak of one humanity is because at the core of every culture, every age,

and every wisdom tradition, there has always been one principle that all could understand.

You will find this principle...

– In the Ancient Egyptian Eloquent Peasant

– In the Vedas and Upanishads

– In Moses’ Ten Commandments

– In the Torah, Book of Leviticus

– In Laozi’s Tao Te Ching

– In the Confucian Analects

– In the works of the Ancient Greeks: Plato, Epicurus

– In the Sanskrit Mahabharata– In the Deuterocanonical books

– In the Tamil Tirukkural (Book of Virtue)

– In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount– In Seneca’s On Slavery

– In the Babylonian Talmud– In the Pahlavi texts of Zoroastrianism

– In the Holy Qur’an and Islamic Hadiths

And also in the secular formulations of Humanism,

from the Kantian Categorical Imperative to modern declarations of universal rights.

Even in its own way, in the biological insight of Reciprocal Altruism,in evolutionary theory.

For over 5000 years, when we were at our best,

we acknowledged one overarching value:

The Golden Rule of Mercy.

It is the common ground of all people’s purposes.

It is the deep code of our shared dignity.

Have mercy, now.