 Since the self is a bundle of changing psychological and physical attributes whose boundaries are conventionally established, and since its attributes exist only in relation to other things outside its conventionally established boundaries, it ought to dampen its self-regarding cares and concerns and widen the boundaries of its concerns to embrace all life. This Buddhist reasoning certainly is an interesting way to ground impersonal concern, and it may appeal to those of us who see little plausibility in the idea of Cartesian substances as fixed ego entities. On the other hand, this reasoning 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 particular others such as friends and family members. Buddhism is especially well known for its advocacy of detachment, not only from material possessions, worldly power and status, but also from particular people and communities. For example, in Ashvaghosha’s poem on “Nanda the Fair,” the Buddha explains to Nanda that delusion alone ties one person to another (Conze, 1959, 110). The argument is that a family is like a group of travelers at an inn who come together for a while and then part. No one belongs to anyone else. A family is held together only as sand is held in a clenched fist. A number of Neo-Confucians, such as the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi, harshly accused Buddhists of selfishness while not quite squaring that accusation with the ideal of the Boddhisattvas in Mahayana Buddhism, who delay their entrance into Nirvana, their final release from suffering, until all beings are liberated from suffering. What the neo-Confucians might have been saying is that the real appeal of Buddhism is to the selfish impulse to save oneself, regardless of what their doctrines say.