According to the Buddha’s teaching, it is as wrong to hold the opinion ‘I have so self’ (which is the annihilationist theory) as to hold the opinion ‘I have self’ (which is the eternalist theory), because both are fetters, both arising out of the false idea ‘I AM’. The correct position with regard to the question of Anatta is not to take hold of any opinions or views, but to try to see things objectively as they are without mental projections, to see that what we call ‘I’, or ‘being’, is only a combination of physical and mental aggregates, which are working together interdependently in a flux of momentary change within the law of cause and effect, and that there is nothing permanent, everlasting, unchanging and eternal in the whole of existence.
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The Buddha’s teaching on Anatta, No-Soul, or No-Self, should not be considered as negative or annihilistic. Like Nirvana, it is Truth, Reality; and Reality cannot be negative. The teaching on Anatta dispels the darkness of false beliefs, and produces the light of wisdom. It is not negative: as Asanga very aptly says: ‘There is the fact of No-selfness’.
What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula