Mencius said, “Treat with respect the elders in my family and then extend that respect to include the elders in other families. Treat with tenderness the young in my own family, and then extend that tenderness to include the young in other families. … Let mulberry trees be planted about the homesteads with their five mou, and men of fifty will be able to be clothed in silk. Let there be timely care for fowls, pigs, dogs, and swine, and men of seventy will be able to have meat to eat. Let there be no neglect in the timely cultivation of the arm with its hundred mou, and the family of eight mouths will suffer no hunger. Let serious attention be paid to education in school, elucidating the principles of filial piety and brotherly respect, and the gray-haired men will not carry burdens on the roads. There has never been a case when men of seventy had silk to wear and meat to eat, when the common people were neither hungry nor cold, and yet the ruler did not become the true king of the empire.” [Book of Mencius1A:7]
Social
harmony could be achieved if every member of the society has the heart to
consider one another. The capacity to be considerate to others is one of the qualities
of a human-hearted or ‘jen’ person. ‘Jen’ being one of the basic qualities of
the chun-tzu should be developed to achieve the social harmony. Thus, if
everyone cultivates himself to be a chun-tzu, he will cultivate
human-heartedness in himself as well. Through this, social harmony could be
easily achieved.
‘Jen’ or
human-heartedness is not doing to others what you do not want to be done to
you. Thus, the key to human-heartedness is knowing what you like and do not
like for yourself and extend it to others. ‘Jen’
is a characteristic of chun-tzu rooted on Hsin
which is Filial piety and T’i which
is brotherly respect and expressed through Chung
(conscientiousness) and Shu
(altruism). Both Filial piety and brotherly respect is learned within the
confines of the family which is considered as the basic unit of the society. Chung is doing one’s very best for one’s
self, the extension of it is shu
which is doing one’s best for the welfare of others.
The
roots and expressions of ‘Jen’ are both learned and experienced inside the
margins of the family. But, these learnings and experiences are not limited to the
restrictions of our homes. In creating
Social Harmony, these learnings should be extended from one’s self into the
members of one’s own family and to the other members of other’s family until it
reaches the society as a whole.
Mencius in his Book 1A:7, has put
great emphasis on the cultivation of one’s self not just for the benefit of
one’s own but for the benefit of others as well. Mencius have pointed out that
one should not strive for the good of one’s self alone but for the good of his
bigger family which is the society he belongs in. Through extending one’s self
to others, everyone is able to make the other an extension of himself. Thus he
does good for others so he could do good to himself. A chun-tzu also knows that
he will not do harm to others because he would only inflict harm to himself.
This quality of a chun-tzu that one cultivates within one’s self helps in the
achievement of social harmony. If then, social harmony will garner equal
satisfaction from every members of the society
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