 In Buddhism, especially Chan Buddhism, there also is rejection of conventional ethical values as blinkering and distorting (see Hui Neng, Liuxu tanjing, and The Recorded Conversations of I-Hsüan), and also a sense that one can become attuned to the world so as to move with its grain. This is not surprising since Buddhism was profoundly influenced by Daoism upon its importation into China. However, Buddhism may have especially challenging implications for Western ethics in its special emphasis on the elimination of suffering and on the way it explains suffering by referring to the human attachment to self as fixed ego entity. As noted above in discussing Parfit’s connection to the Buddhist view of the self, realization that the self is not a bounded and discrete entity may encourage a much more impersonal view of oneself and one’s projects and desires. One’s concern widens to all of life, and one dampens one’s desires so as to lessen attachment to the self’s cares and concerns. Some may find this an unacceptably demanding ethic. It may seem to drain all passion from life, and it requires that we dampen the attachment we have not only to our selves but also to special others. This negative reaction may fit with Kupperman’s (1999) characterization of much Western ethics as upholding only a limited altruism that allows one a private sphere of life free from moral demands and in which one gives much more weight to the cares and concerns of the self and those close to the self. However, as the above comparison with Parfit suggests, there are themes in Western philosophy that parallel the kind of impersonal altruism urged upon us by Buddhism. Some utilitarians have strongly held to the theme that each counts for one in calculating what produces the greatest good, and they have derived challenging consequences from that theme for the question of what one should be prepared to give to alleviate the suffering of strangers (see Singer, 1972, and Unger, 1996), arguing that the way many in affluent nations indulge themselves and their own is simply insupportable in a world of widespread and severe suffering. Some have seen the sort of impersonal concern that utilitarianism may demand as an indication that it unsuitable for human beings, who are so strongly partial to themselves and their own (see Williams, 1981 and Wolf, 1982). Buddhism presses for the possibility that impersonal concern is humanly possible, and the fact that it is a vibrant and long-lived tradition with many committed practitioners provides some support for the viability of impersonal concern as a ideal that is capable of claiming allegiance and influencing how people try to live their lives (see Flanagan, 2013 for a reference to Buddhism in support of the viability of such an ideal .