To someone terrified, in despair, and depleted of sufficient energy to do anything it is not helpful to recommend the practices enjoined in the perfection of energy. These practices, as we have seen, are training for someone already well endowed with the capacity for energetic striving; it is training intended to prevent the occurrence of extreme despair by providing both purpose and the energy to stay with it. Energy to engage in practice, not to mention motivation and purpose, is precisely what those in terror and despair lack. In such a predicament, Mahayana sutras often recommend devotional exercises – prayer, chanting, and ritual. Here is how it is put in the Vimalakirti Sūtra, a text that is otherwise entirely focused on practice and conception at the level of the most discerning bodhisattvas. Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom, poses a question to Vimalakirti, the sutra’s most exemplary image of wisdom:

Mañjuśrī: To what should one resort when terrified by fear of life?

Vimalakirti: Mañjuśrī, a Bodhisattva who is terrified by fear of life should resort to the magnanimity of the Buddha.

The magnanimity of the Buddha is the Buddhist image of compassion and grace. In situations where we simply lack the power to pull ourselves up out of a lifeless despair, only “outside” help remains. “Outside help” would include theistic grace, medical and psychological assistance, the kindness and concern of family and friends, and more. The fundamental teachings of Mahayana Buddhism preclude conceiving of these as truly outside,” however. “No-self” means simply that the lines separating inside from outside are porous, temporary, and always open to erasure by way of the confluence of community interaction. When one person is saved or revived through the compassionate agency of others, the community heals itself.