What Would Buddha Say?

The Buddha taught that empirical observation of experience with the ultimate goal of seeing and realizing the truths of impermanence (anicca), no self (anatta), and suffering (dukkha) inherent in experience, leads logically to the relinquishment of clinging to experience. While Buddha’s rejection of a self seems counterintuitive, his rejection of any sense of an eternal self is perhaps less so: he did not experience an eternal atman; it was not empirically observable to him; he reasoned that hoping for such was rooted in suffering.