The Middle Between Eternalism and Annihilation

Anatta is easy to overstate, and the tradition guards it on two sides. When the wanderer Vacchagotta asked point-blank whether there is a self, the Buddha is recorded as refusing both answers, to say "there is a self" would be the error of eternalism, positing a permanent soul; to say "there is no self" would be the error of annihilationism, denying continuity and moral responsibility altogether. Non-self is thus taught as a middle path between the two extremes: not the metaphysical thesis "you do not exist," but the analytic claim that nothing among the constituents of the person is a permanent self.

The doctrine was contested inside Buddhism as well. The Pudgalavada school posited a "person" (pudgala) that was neither identical with the aggregates nor separable from them, precisely to secure rebirth and memory; other schools rejected it as smuggling the self back in, and it did not survive as a major tradition. Later, the Mahayana extended non-self from persons to all phenomena, the "selflessness of dharmas", so that not only the person but every element of experience is empty of inherent existence, the move that opens onto the doctrine of emptiness (sunyata).