What we do
The Golden Rule
Eight traditions. One instruction, arrived at separately, in different centuries, in different languages, by people who had never met.
Why it matters here
The oldest thing we have in common
Treat others as you would wish to be treated. Almost every faith on earth teaches it, and almost none of them borrowed it from the others. It appears in the Talmud and in the Mahabharata, in the Gospel and in the hadith, in Buddhist verse and in Zoroastrian law.
That is worth sitting with. Eight communities in Halton disagree about a great many things — about scripture, about worship, about what happens after we die. On this, independently, they agree.
It is where the Council starts, and it is what we ask every faith group to speak about when we take the Interfaith Youth Festival into a school: describe the Golden Rule according to your faith.
In their own words
Eight traditions, eight texts
Each is quoted from its own scripture, and cited so that anyone can check it.
Bahá’í Faith
Lay not on any soul a load which ye would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire not for any one the things ye would not desire for yourselves.
Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, LXVI
Buddhism
Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
Udanavarga 5:18
Christianity
In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew 7:12
Hinduism
One should never do to another that which one regards as injurious to oneself. This, in brief, is the rule of dharma.
The Mahabharata, Anushasana Parva 113:8
Islam
None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) — Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim; An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith, 13
Judaism
What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.
Hillel, Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a
Sikhism
No one is my enemy, and no one is a stranger. I get along with everyone.
Guru Arjan, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 1299 (Raag Kanrha)
Zoroastrianism
Whatever is disagreeable to yourself, do not do unto others.
Shayast-na-Shayast 13:29
Worth noticing
They do not all say it the same way
Read the eight together and a difference appears that a single summary would hide. The rule is shared; the grammar of it is not.
Stated as a restraint
Most traditions put it negatively: do not do to another what you would hate done to you. Hillel, the Mahabharata, the Udanavarga and Zarathushtra all take this form. It asks for restraint before it asks for anything else — and it is harder to argue with.
Stated as an obligation
Christianity and Islam put it positively. Matthew asks you to act; the hadith goes further still and asks you to want for another what you want for yourself. That is a demand on the heart, not only on the hands.
Stated as kinship
The Sikh scripture does not frame it as a rule at all. Guru Arjan simply reports a condition: no one is a stranger to me. Where the others tell you what to do, this one tells you what it feels like when you no longer need telling.
Everyone is welcome at the table
One rule, eight ways of holding it
The Council does not exist because our traditions are the same. It exists because, on the thing that matters most in how we treat a neighbour, they already agree.