 In response to the objection that personal identity justifies special concern, Śāntideva simply denies that there is a real relation of personal identity. This denial is based on a long philosophical tradition within Buddhism, stretching back to its earliest days, of defenses and expositions of the doctrine of no self, the most important and distinctive of all Buddhist teachings. But Śāntideva employs that doctrine in what may well have been a novel way. It is quite common for Buddhist texts to assert that if we can realize experientially that there is no substantial self, this realization will cause us to be more altruistic. What Śāntideva argues here is that an intellectual understanding of the absence of any self can give us reason to affirm altruism as supremely rational and egoism as rationally untenable. In this respect, Śāntideva anticipates the central argument of Derek Parfit’s celebrated book Reasons and Persons (Parfit 1984; see especially ch. 14–15).