Śāntideva · शान्तिदेव

An eighth-century monk at Nālandā whom his brothers thought did nothing but eat, sleep and defecate, until they invited him to teach as a joke and he recited the Bodhicaryāvatāra from the seat, rising into the air as he reached the ninth chapter — so the story goes. The poem is the great manual of the bodhisattva vow, and its argument is a strange, sharp piece of logic: if suffering is bad, it is bad wherever it occurs, and the boundary marked "me" gives it no special weight. All the joy this world contains has come through wishing happiness for others. The Kabbalah reaches the same practical conclusion by an opposite metaphysics — tikkun olam, and the tzaddik who descends in order to raise others, because the sparks are scattered and your own vessel cannot be whole while any of them lie in the shells. One says there is no self, so why prefer this one; the other says every soul is precious and yours is bound to all of them. Two entirely different reasons to do exactly the same thing.