"Happiness comes to those who bring happiness to others." (Zoroastrianism, Yasna 53:3)
True, false, good, bad, useful, not so useful, etc.? Discuss.
My thoughts:
Another version of the Golden Rule, but as observation rather than prescription.
The observation seems valid to me -- "you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar" -- but your mileage may vary.
The more interesting thing to me is that the Yasna seems to pre-date Jewish, Christian, and Muslim versions of the Golden Rule by quite some time. It's hard to say for sure, since the Yasna wasn't published in written form until the 5th century AD (so it's possible that this aphorism arrived late to the script), but its oral transmission began, historians think, in the second millennium BC, more than 1,000 years before Hillel and Christ.
I suspect variations of the Golden Rule go all the way back to the beginning of humankind communicating ideas with each other.
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