An interesting tidbit from the early Buddhist canon: [Chavalata Sutta: A Firebrand (AN 4.95)](https://suttacentral.net/an4.95/en/sujato) >Suppose there was a firebrand for lighting a funeral pyre, burning at both ends, and smeared with dung in the middle. It couldn’t be used as timber either in the village or the wilderness. The person who practices to benefit neither themselves nor others is like this, I say.  > >The person who practices to benefit others, but not themselves, is better than that. The person who practices to benefit themselves, but not others, is better than both of those. But the person who practices to benefit both themselves and others is the foremost, best, chief, highest, and finest of the four. The person who helps others but neglects themselves is explicitly ranked _below_ the one who helps only themselves. That runs counter to certain American cultural ideals—especially in religious or gendered subcultures—where “self-sacrifice” is praised as the highest virtue, particularly for women. The text frames neglect of self-cultivation as a structural flaw: without attending to one’s own training, wisdom, or liberation, one’s help to others is limited or unstable. --- How does this dovetail with [[Selflessness]]? They share two principles: - Being of benefit is good (tautological) - Dividing the world into self and other gets in the way of being of benefit... #to-be-continued