How can Buddhism reconcile the idea of individual salvation (attainment of inner peace through the experience of enlightenment) with its key concept of selflessness? Is this similar to the "problem of love"?

Seems to be, doesn't it? It may be that language fails to capture the necessary concepts adequately, resulting in an apparent dilemma.

Careful, give them an inch ...

I know.. Study the essence of Buddhism and find the answer to your question..

Maybe I have.

Because their attainment of individual salvation has as one of its core components compassion for all things and helping others out along the way. Similar in the way that complete selflessness is the best form of selfishness according to the prinicple of karmic return.



Does this come under the 'everything is an illusion anyway' idea?

Is dissolution of the ego selfish?

Aren't enlightened beings in a better position to help the unenlightened? And isn't that also what Bodhisattvas are for? The Buddha(s) show the way to let people know that complete salvation is a possibility, while the Bodhisattvas come back to help us out.

Surely the important issue is whether humans have the capacity to ever act selflessly, or whether there is always some other (ulterior?) motive, even though it might not be obvious or immediately de-constructive. We should look more deeply at motives for human actions, and not be presumptuous, as we often are.

I think that there is always some ulterior motive for selfless action. Whether it be a warm and fuzzy feeling you get from doing nice things for people or whether it is more 'I think I should be doing this' motivated. Buddhism is probably trying to tap into the warm and fuzzy feelings of compassion through their meditations (which could induce a similar effect to mdma administration) rather than the duty orientated motivations. That could probably elicit a subjective state of compassion merely for the sake of compassion, and the internal state is the reward.

I would love to see a study examining mdma and dopamine antagonist co-adminstration. All the love without the hyper?

The capacity for humans to act selflessly is inherent, often covered over by internal programs of fear. Differing levels of conscious awareness as described by Patanjali or Govindra Yogindra in the Yoga Sutras, puts the awareness in a different experience of reality.
The perspectives of life change as one rises above fear just as it does when one is awake rather than sleeping.
Fear/Ego is what burdens the waking state and leads one to try and manipulate the environment to protect ones self from reoccuring experiences of the past.
When the mind is released from the limitations of the ego in its dominant fear based level of awareness, one is more apt to think and act without carrying the burden of failure and possible suffering along for the ride.
If one brings themselves back to the innocense of a child who hasn't spent a great deal of time accumulating experiences to dwell on so that the mind wanders between the past and the future, the experience of life is much more expanded or full, and lived in the present moment. Imagine a child getting ready for its day wondering if it will be a successful day and if it will be productive at play.
Generally children live in the moment without the fear that adults carry. They have to learn to be afraid and to worry about success and failure. It is society and the parents who teach their children to be afraid and to worry.

Most adults have spun themselves into a reactionary mode. People drive their cars on freeways gripping the steering wheels on their way to work with their mind whirling thoughts about the day. Some one cuts them off and they react. Wth the nervous system poised in the fight or flight mode, blood goes to the muscles and the brain starving the internal organs of nutrients and oxygen creating stress in the body. Many live daily with their nerves on the edge this way.
A lot of people try to relax by pouring chemicals into the body such as alchohol or taking drugs, but this doesn't prepare them for the next occurance only numbs them temporarily of their wandering thoughts and feelings.

Rather than react when cut off on the freeway a conscious choice could be made to find appreciation for what one has in life rather than what they are losing, to look at the glass as half full rather than half empty, but that would have to be from a more expanded state of conscious awareness than a reactionary state of consciousness. Reactionary impulses and judgment is learned. The ability to make a conscious choice from a more expanded state of awareness is within and sometimes has to be re-cognized because of the over-written programs created by emotional judgments and ideas of the ego.

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, looked down from the peaceful celestial realms upon the suffering and confusion in the worlds of illusion. He was filled with such intense compassion that his thoughts, desiring the liberation of all beings, expanded his head into a thousand heads. From his body sprang a thousand helping hands. In each palm an eye appeared.

This allegory represents that Compassion is not a blind emotion, but love combined with wisdom. The wisdom of compassion is knowing the inner oneness of all life. This leads to the capacity to recognize the suffering of the world and of others without losing internal stability. Once one has developed this ability, the energy of love can move to heal the suffering.
Compassion does not mean suffering with another; true compassion means recognizing the suffering of others without being affected by it. Only from this platform of stability does the ability to heal manifest.

The law of Selflessness is, as one gives love one recieves love automatically, usually a hundredfold in return. In one sense it could be seen as selfish but if one is self realised, internally and externally connected to all of life, to give to humanity is to give to ones self.
Surrendering in service becomes second nature and without the need to protect ones self from negativity in thoughts of suffering and failure.
One must rise above the limitations created by the internal stresses and thoughts of fear and suffering in order to act without the need to get something in return. The need of the ego is created from a belief in lack, that there is never enough to go around or that one might not get what they deserve. Life lived from the foundation of these beliefs is not free and the mind is always burdened by the thoughts of how to get ones share from a world that doesn't have enough.

"Selflessness" in Buddhism can be understood on many levels. One of the furthest-reaching is the idea that all things are empty of self-nature. This is the teaching of anatta, or non-self. There is nothing that contains the essence of its own existence. That is often a very difficult proposition for people to understand, and understandably so. But leaving aside the philosophical underpinnings for the moment...

It is taught that the experience of suffering (which is arguably Buddhism's main and most pressing concern) depends upon the idea of a self.

(Some wise Buddhist said: "Whenever I think of myself, I suffer.")

Seeing this, Buddhists examine the idea of a self very rigorously. Eventually it is seen to be a fabrication. And once that realisation is developed, it goes a long way toward assuaging suffering. Or towards, as Hey Hey puts it, individual salvation.

So that's one way in which the two ideas (salvation, and selflessness) are reconciled in Buddhism. In fact, to say that they are "reconciled" is somewhat inaccurate. Far from being contradictory and requiring reconciliation, they are mutually supporting.