Zen & Buddhism

No Self (Anatta)

Realizing there is no fixed, independent self - only flow of experience.

When we look for the self, we find only changing phenomena. No fixed 'I' can be found - just body, feelings, perceptions, formations, consciousness, all in flux. This isn't nihilism but liberation from defending an imaginary separate self.

Form, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness - all not-self. Seeing this leads to liberation.

Anatta-lakkhana Sutta

Written about in

• What Zen says about death

  Look for the self and you find changing parts — body, feeling, perception, thought — and no fixed owner among them. The entry calls this liberation, not nihilism.