Joy will carry your inner strength to others that will encourage and invigorate them. They will be inspired to take on all hardships in seeking truth and elevating themselves to a profound spiritual existence. As long as the past does not resurface, it will have a lasting effect. You will be the center of an irresistible attraction to that aspiration as long as you remain humble and free.
The text reads (from Richard Wilhelm’s translation):
“[When] the hearts of men are won by friendliness, they are led to take all hardships upon themselves willingly, and if need be will not shun death itself, so great is the power of joy over men.
We often find ourselves associating with inferior people in whose company we are tempted by pleasures that are inappropriate for the superior man. To participate in such pleasures would certainly bring remorse, for a superior man can find no real satisfaction in low pleasures. When, recognising this, a man does not permit his will to swerve, so that he does not find such ways agreeable, not even dubious companions will venture to proffer any base pleasures, because he would not enjoy them. Thus every cause for regret is removed.
This attraction between affinities is a general law of nature. Heaven and earth attract each other and thus all creatures come into being. Through such attraction the sage influences men’s hearts, and thus the world attains peace. From the attractions they exert we can learn the nature of all beings in heaven and on earth.”
