Theme

Non-Self

Anatta — the seeing that no permanent self can be found in the five aggregates. The third mark of existence and the radical correction the Buddha offered to the Brahmanical atman.

Knowledge3

Sites1

Teachings2

Products0

Knowledge

Ancient Gandharan schist statue of the seated, meditating Buddha from the Swat Valley, Pakistan

Concepts

Anatta

The second of the three marks: that nothing whatsoever bears within itself a permanent, independent, unchanging self. Not the body, not the feelings, not the perceptions, not the formations, not even consciousness.

A stone Buddha head at Wat Mahathat, Ayutthaya, entwined and reclaimed by the roots of a Bodhi tree

Core Teachings

The Three Marks of Existence

Three characteristics belong to all conditioned phenomena: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self. To see them clearly in one's own experience is the precondition of liberating insight.

Bronze Amida Buddha seated in meditation (dhyana mudra), Japan, 1800–1850, National Museum of Scotland

Concepts

The Five Aggregates

The five-fold analysis of personal experience by which the Buddha demonstrated the absence of a permanent self. What we take to be a person is exhaustively five processes: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. None of them is self; their assembly is not self.

Sacred Sites

india arc

Sarnath

The First Sermon.

Teachings

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

An Interview with Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

A studio interview on the nature of devotion, the place of the guru, and what it means to take refuge in a tradition that is dissolving and remaking itself in real time.

Ven. Kondanya Mahathero

The Path of the Abhidhamma — Session I

A teaching on the Abhidhamma — the higher analysis of mental factors that distinguishes the Theravada from every other Buddhist school. Session one of an ongoing series at Bhrikutimandap.

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Awakening9 Compassion14 Concentration4 Death8 Dependent Origination6 Devotion7 Doubt2 Effort3