Ernest Becker’s true hero lives without illusion. Such a person understands with their whole being both their own smallness and the immensity of the world, together with the terror and tragedy of life. They seek neither fame nor salvation nor immortality. With a deep awareness of their own nothingness before existence, they choose nonetheless.

This choice recalls some of the foundational ideas associated here with Shantideva, a major figure in Mahayana Buddhism, the later form of Buddhism that developed strongly in Tibet: the idea that the fundamental truth of human existence is emptiness.

An unawakened life does not arrive at emptiness because it remains surrounded by fear, and at the centre of that fear is a confused mind attached to what cannot endure.

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