Shu: The Silver Rule

When a student asked Confucius for a single word to guide all behavior, he answered: shu — reciprocity. "Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire." This negative phrasing, often called the Silver Rule, appears in the Analects and dates to roughly 500 BCE. It is one of history's most influential formulations of reciprocity, though far from the only one: similar maxims arose independently across ancient traditions, from Egypt and Greece to India, some of them centuries earlier.

Some scholars argue the negative version is actually more practical than the positive "do unto others." The positive form assumes you know what others want. The negative form requires only that you recognize what causes suffering and refrain from inflicting it.