Extend the Love of Your Own Child to Others

answered by Mencius, King Hui of Liang I

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🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

The King of Masks (1996)

dir. Wu Tianming · China

An old man who would pass on his art only by blood meets a child placed outside that line. Is family fixed by blood alone, or does the heart's resolve to cherish each other make a true family?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Without blood ties, can people become one another's true family?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

老吾老以及人之老幼吾幼以及人之幼

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

Treat your own elders as elders and extend it to others'; cherish your own young and extend it to others' young.

💡 TL;DR

Mencius urged widening the love for one's own elders and children to those of others.

📝The Classic Answers

Mencius urged widening the love for one's own elders and children to those of others. Family is fixed not by blood alone but widens by how far that cherishing reaches. When old prejudice says 'you are not my blood, so I cannot pass this on,' Mencius's wisdom is to cross that line and extend the cherishing heart. Two who have resolved to cherish each other are already family, though no blood joins them. Rather than caging my heart at the line of blood, I choose to widen that cherishing to even one more person.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

Today, extend to someone you'd fenced off as 'not my blood' the same tenderness you give your own.

📖 Classic Source: Mencius, King Hui of Liang I. Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.