Mystical systems
Anatta
Direct answer
Anatta: Anatta, anatman in Sanskrit, is the Buddhist teaching of not-self: nothing in a person's body or mind is a permanent, independent self that could be called I or mine.
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At a glance
- Also called
- anatman, no-self buddhism, not-self, buddhist doctrine of no self
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Nirvana, Samsara, Moksha, Karma
Anatta, anatman in Sanskrit, is the Buddhist teaching of not-self: nothing in a person's body or mind is a permanent, independent self that could be called I or mine.
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What does anatta mean?
Anatta is formed from the word for self, atta, with a negative in front. The Buddha's argument takes a person apart into five heaps: bodily form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness. Each is shown to change, to be beyond full control and to lead to distress when clung to, and so none of them can be a lasting self. Nothing else is found over and above the five.
This makes Buddhist rebirth a puzzle that the tradition answers with images. One flame lights another; the second is neither the same flame nor a wholly different one. What links one life to the next is a chain of causes, driven by craving and by intentional action, and not a thing that travels.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Past lives and karma.
What sets Anatta apart
Anatta is a strategy before it is a doctrine. In the discourses the Buddha rarely asserts that there is no self; asked point blank by the wanderer Vacchagotta, he stays silent. What he does is go through experience item by item and ask of each whether it is fit to be regarded as mine, as what I am. The answer is always no. The teaching is aimed at the act of clinging, and its test is practical: whether grasping at body, feeling and thought as oneself slackens.
- Pali and Sanskrit: anatta and anatman: not self
- Counted among: the three marks of existence, with impermanence and suffering
- The five heaps: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness
- Key discourse: the Anattalakkhana Sutta, by tradition the second sermon
- Classic image: the chariot in the Questions of King Milinda
Often mistaken for something else: Nihilism says that nothing matters or survives and that deeds have no fruit; anatta denies a fixed self while keeping karma, consequence and rebirth fully in place.
The story behind Anatta
Tradition counts the Discourse on the Mark of Not-Self as the Buddha's second sermon, given to his first five followers in the deer park near Varanasi. The Questions of King Milinda, a text of around the turn of the era, has the monk Nagasena compare a person to a chariot, a convenient name for parts assembled. One early school, the Pudgalavada, held that some kind of person does carry over, and the other schools argued against it for centuries.
Why Anatta matters
Anatta is the point on which Buddhism breaks with the other Indian teachings of rebirth, and the reason careful writers say rebirth and not reincarnation.
How to read Anatta
In meditation it is applied as a question put to each passing experience, whether this is really me or mine, and not held as a theory about the cosmos.
Anatta in practice: an example
Someone asks who is reborn if there is no self, and is answered with a question: is the adult the same person as the infant, or a different one?
Where readings of Anatta go wrong
Anatta does not say that people are unreal or that actions have no owner. The same texts insist on responsibility for what one does.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- anatman, anatta meaning, no-self buddhism, not-self, buddhist doctrine of no self
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What does anatta mean?
It means not-self. It is the Buddhist teaching that neither the body nor any part of the mind is a permanent self, and it is counted with impermanence and suffering as one of the three marks of existence.
How can there be rebirth without a self?
Buddhist texts describe a stream of causes and effects that continues across death, as a flame passes from one lamp to another. There is continuity without any unchanging thing being handed on.
Is anatta the opposite of atman?
In wording, yes: anatta is the Pali form of anatman, not atman. The Upanishads teach an enduring self to be realised; the Buddha taught that looking closely turns up no such self.
