Explain in Brief the Buddhist Concept of No-Soul or Anatta

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Introduction The Buddhist doctrine of no-soul, not-self or Anatta is an essential, basic teaching characteristic to Buddhism that supports other teachings unique to only Buddhism. In comparison to Buddhism, the views regarding the existence of the soul, religious or non-religious, can be classified into two main groups: eternalism or materialism.1 The former upholds the dualist existence of a permanent entity known as the soul, or the self, the metaphysical, imperishable essence that survives the death of the impermanent, perishable physical body. On the contrary, the latter identifies the self as the physical body and purely composed of earthly matters, which is annihilated at death and fades into non-existence. The Buddhist teaching of no soul stands in the middle between these two extremes.1 Anatta refers to the absence of a self in everything, and is one of the three characteristics of the universe (the other two being Anicca and Dukkha, referring to the all things being impermanent, and being subject to affliction which leads to unsatisfactoriness respectively)2. The absence of the self denotes the lack of an ego which an individual can truly call “I” or “myself” in reality, that an individual should not be seen as a consistent and permanent entity. Rather, the Buddha teaches that the concept of “I” is true in the conventional reality3, but in the ultimate reality, individual constantly undergoes change, experiences the metaphorical death and rebirth endlessly in one’s lifetime in the process of becoming a different individual with different traits, physical or mental, and upon physical death takes on a prominently different set of conditions according to the individual’s karma in the previous life through samara. Therefore Buddhism rejects the concept of a permanent soul in living beings, yet it does not believe that a being is annihilated at death.

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