Today I was checking out the asian sculpture at the wonderful Ring of Fire Imports in Berkeley, and it reminded me that I once had a brush with what may be a bodhisattva. A few years ago I moved to a new place. Moving is especially difficult for me: I was working sporadically as a temp, I had no savings, I had no family and few friends in the area, and I don’t drive. After making some elaborate arrangements for exchange of services, I put together a group of friends who were supposed to help me move. Since helping someone move is one of the top ten most onerous duties of friendship, everyone who had agreed to help found an excuse to back out. Since someone else was supposed to be moving into my old place that week, I had no idea what to do.

Then a miracle happened. Another temp that I barely knew, heard me calling my friends and begging for help – and out of nowhere, he volunteered to help me. He had a car, and he spent a day doing a lot of heavy lifting and making multiple trips. I asked him what motivated him to help a stranger this way when all my supposed friends had ducked out of it. He explained that he was a Buddhist, and his religious beliefs guided him to act selflessly and reach out to anyone who needed his help.

After I met this person, I read a bit about Buddhism, and one of the things I learned is that the role of the Bodhisattva is to help other people reach enlightenment. The person who helped me move certainly played that role for me. To this day when I’m faced with a difficult ethical question, I ask myself what this guy would do. He’s the person who represents what it means to Do the Right Thing in my mind.

I’m bringing up this story because this is one model for building a dignitarian society. Rankism often results from people putting their own convenience before anything else and excluding the people who most need their help. The Bodhisattva seeks out those who need help and embraces the inconvenient as an opportunity for selflessness. Look for the potential Bodhisattvas around you and recognize that they are the leaders in creating a dignitarian way of life.