How Acts of Kindness Forge a Better Society

(Minghui.org) Plato once said, “Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.” In China, the ancient sage Laozi also wrote, “The highest goodness is like water. Water benefits all things and does not compete.” Then, if a social atmosphere of goodness is so beneficial, how is it created? Here are two stories related to this.

Setting up Examples

According to History of Song, Chen Yaozuo in the Song Dynasty was a kind person and also frugal. Although his father was a high official, Chen often repaired broken household items and mended old clothing—he didn’t just throw things away. When he went out on inspections and saw wild animals, he would instruct his assistants not to harm them.

When Chen was serving as an officer in Shouzhou (in today’s Anhui Province), famine struck. Knowing that many people were starving, Chen took the lead to donate grain and arranged for food be prepared for the hungry. When other officials and some wealthy families in Shouzhou heard what he did, they followed suit. A great deal of food was donated and tens of thousands of lives were saved.

When Chancellor Lyu Yijian retired, Emperor Renzong of Song asked him to recommend a successor. Lu recommended Chen, saying that Chen had a “deep understanding of how ordinary people lived.” Chen was later appointed as chancellor.

Establishing Good Practices

The Book of Sui documents the story of Xin Gongyi. He studied hard from the time he was young and cared about his people when he was an official. When Xin was governor of Minzhou (in today’s Gansu Province), he discovered that many people were unwilling to look after sick family members for fear of becoming ill themselves. It was the case even between parents and children or husband and wife. That meant that many people who fell ill died unnecessarily.

Worried that people were losing their sense of kindness and their filial piety, Xin decided to do something about it. He sent lower officials to look for people who were sick and bring them to the hallway in his own home. He set up a bed for himself in the hallway and stayed with those who were ill from dawn to dusk while he worked. With his own money, Xin bought medicine and paid doctors to treat these patients. He also helped feed them. As a result, many of them recovered.

Xin then invited the patients’ families to come. “When people abandoned their sick family members in the past, the patients died. Now, I have brought them here and stayed with them every day. If taking care of those who are ill will make one sick, I would have been ill already,” he said. “But I am fine and the patients have recovered.”

With guilt in their hearts, the people thanked him and left with their recovered family members. After that, people began to care for each other more.

Conclusion

Confucius said, “When a society follows the heavenly law... Those with virtue and talents are appointed [as officials] and people are honest and harmonious. As a result, people do not just treat their own parents as parents, they do not just treat their own children as children. As a result, the elderly are taken care of, the adults make the best use of their strength, and the youth can grow and develop.”

But this is possible only when the general public has kindness in their hearts. In today’s China, however, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders fight only to preserve their own interests and ensnare the Chinese people in their machinations. They suppress and deceive ordinary people while persecuting innocent Falun Gong practitioners for their faith in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. These actions will only lead China down a path of instability, where the only way to avoid the tumult is to distance yourself from the CCP and reject its ideology of struggle.