In addition to bringing medical care to remote mountain villages half a world away, Halifax has ministered to the dying in hospice, worked with the homeless in New Mexico, cared for prisoners on death row, and led countless protests for peace. I don’t know if Halifax has shed the last remnants of her ego—she would say she hasn’t—but the selflessness she manifests in the conduct of her life is something to behold, a reminder of what the exploration of human consciousness can lead a person to do and be. This, too, is a Buddhist principle—that overcoming one’s own small self should lead to greater compassion for others, and that the suffering alleviated when we transcend the ego is not only our own.