Anātman

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Key Term	anātman
Hover Popup Choices	selflessness
In Tibetan Script	བདག་མེད་པ་
Wylie Tibetan Transliteration	bdag med pa
Devanagari Sanskrit Script	अनात्मन्
Tibetan Phonetic Rendering	dakmépa
Chinese Script	无我
Chinese Pinyin	wúwǒ
Japanese Transliteration	muga
Korean Transliteration	mua
English Standard	selflessness
Karl Brunnhölzl's English Term	identitylessness
Richard Barron's English Term	nonexistence of identity; lack/absence of identity
Jeffrey Hopkin's English Term	selflessness
Ives Waldo's English Term	egoless[ness]
Alternate Spellings	nairātmya
Term Type	Noun
Source Language	Sanskrit
Basic Meaning	The nonexistence of the self as a permanent, unchanging entity.
Has the Sense of	A key feature of the Buddha's teachings that stood in direct contrast to the mainstream Indian religious-philosophical notion of an eternal self, or ātman.
Did you know?	The teaching that there is no personal self was a crucial precursor to the Buddhist concept of emptiness.
Related Terms	Ātman;Svabhāva;Śūnyatā
Definitions
Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism	See page 42: In Sanskrit, “no self” or “nonself” or more broadly “insubstantiality”; the third of the “three marks” (trilakṣaṇa) of existence, along with impermanence (anitya) and suffering (duḥkha). The concept is one of the key insights of the Buddha, and it is foundational to the Buddhist analysis of the compounded quality (samskrta) of existence: since all compounded things are the fruition (phala) of a specific set of causes (hetu) and conditions (pratyaya), they are therefore absent of any perduring substratum of being.
Rangjung Yeshe's English Term	Nonexistence of the self of the individual personality and/ or self-nature of phenomena.

The nonexistence of the self as a permanent, unchanging entity.

Though it can simply be used as the expression "I" or "me", in Indian thought the notion of self refers to a permanent, unchanging entity, such as that which passes from life to life in the case of people, or the innate essence (svabhāva) of phenomena.

Though it can simply be used as the expression "I" or "me", in Indian thought the notion of self refers to a permanent, unchanging entity, such as that which passes from life to life in the case of people, or the innate essence (svabhāva) of phenomena.

Though it can simply be used as the expression "I" or "me", in Indian thought the notion of self refers to a permanent, unchanging entity, such as that which passes from life to life in the case of people, or the innate essence (svabhāva) of phenomena.

Though it can simply be used as the expression "I" or "me", in Indian thought the notion of self refers to a permanent, unchanging entity, such as that which passes from life to life in the case of people, or the innate essence (svabhāva) of phenomena.

Though it can simply be used as the expression "I" or "me", in Indian thought the notion of self refers to a permanent, unchanging entity, such as that which passes from life to life in the case of people, or the innate essence (svabhāva) of phenomena.

The state of being empty of an innate nature due to a lack of independently existing characteristics.

The nature or essence of a thing, which originates only from itself and is not dependent on any external entities, causes, or conditions.