Original text:

Zengzi said: "How! My way is consistent."

Zengzi said: "Only."

Zi After leaving, the disciple asked: "What do you mean?"

Zengzi said: "The Master's way is only loyalty and forgiveness."

Translation:

Confucius said: "The principles I usually talk about can be connected with a theory."

Zeng Shen said: "I understand."

Confucius walked out, and his brothers asked Zeng Shen: " What does this mean?”

Zeng Shen said: “The Master’s way is loyalty and forgiveness.”

What is “loyalty and forgiveness”?

"Loyalty" means "If you want to establish yourself, you can establish others; if you want to achieve yourself, you can achieve others." If you want to stand firm in your own position, you must know how to let others stand firm in their positions. If you want to have a prosperous career, you must know how to let others prosper.

"Forgiveness" means "don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you." If you don't want to happen to yourself, don't inflict it on others.

The detailed explanation is as follows:

We humans are highly intelligent creatures, so we humans are highly social. Society is composed of large and small organizations, and everyone lives in their own organizations, such as family organizations, social organizations, and career organizations. Absolutely no one is a completely free individual. A person has his own identity and position in his own organization, and his identity and position have corresponding powers, responsibilities, and interests. If he wants to stand firm in his position in this organization, he must know how to let others stand firm. Position, to be precise, means respecting the other person's personality, respecting others, and one's own rights, responsibilities, and interests in the organization.

It is obvious that a person's success is often based on the success of the organization. When we say that a person is a successful person, objectively it means that this person is a senior executive of a well-developed business organization. His success often means the success of other members of the organization. Therefore, the fundamental meaning of "loyalty" is that people have social organization, and a person must have an organizational concept. In fact, if a person does not even have this spirit, then the concept of the trinity of power, responsibility, and interests will be very weak, and it will be difficult for this person to gain a foothold in an organization, let alone get promoted and manage an organization well. We can see that people who long for a high degree of personal freedom have poor professionalism in organizations, are often prone to depression, and like to complain. If people put this desire into practice, their family organization, social organization, and career organization are often in a mess.

But what if an organization we join is not good? For example, after forming a family organization, we find that our spouse is too bad; after making friends with someone, we find that this person is too evil; after joining a corporate organization, we find that the company is too shady, then if we are willing and the objective conditions allow it, If so, of course we can choose to divorce, break off relationships, or leave our jobs. This is the freedom we should have. Of course, we should not be the kind of bad spouses, evil friends, or black-hearted business owners who hurt others, because the hurt people, especially those who are truly outstanding, will also make the same choices as us, and we will Divorce, break up, leave our business organization. If the characteristic of "loyalty" is "yang", which is dynamically doing good, then the characteristic of "forgiveness" is "yin", which is static and stops evil. The two complement each other.