The concept of anatta

Anatta is often translated as 'no soul' or 'no self' but perhaps the most beneficial translation for understanding the idea of anatta is 'not self'

• Later Buddhist philosophy extends the principle of anatta to all existence and directly relates to an absence of 'own being' (svabhava) or the 'emptiness' (shunyata) of all conditioned phenomena
• As anatta is one of the three lakshanas, it is true of all existence

The Buddha, when meditating, could not find any one thing that was unchanging within himself

• There was no evidence of the underlying soul or atman found in Hinduism; instead, the Buddha found that many things combine to make a human being
• This view is materialistic in the philosophical sense and rejects the existence of an eternal, unchanging essence within an individual
• The concept of anatta appears to be totally unique and it has been argued that anatta makes Buddhism unique among world religions
• Ajahn Chah compared…