Sabbe dhamma anatta (All dhammas are not-self)
—Dhammapada verse 279—
A Flying Horse Cannot Have Any Quality.
It Cannot be Green nor Can it be Sentient
Those who choose to interpret Anatta as specifically applying to a non-existent soul but not to a non-existent essence that inhabits and distinguishes all phenomena are drawing a line between two impossibilities–claiming a flying horse with no defining colour is substantially different compared to a flying horse that is green or suited only to sentient phenomena.
If one is non-existent by virtue of it not being findable nor logical in a dependent world – nor is the other immune to the exact same logic. If a soul cannot be found due to logic that proves nothing extraordinary exists, then some other name for an extraordinary existent cannot escape the same logic – if the first is excluded then so are all others. To say soul is non-existent but “essence” is real is a logical inconsistency.
The Binary Claim
If a person claims that the Buddha rejected self or soul but did not reject essence or inherent nature, that person must face two options. Both options fail once the Buddha’s method of reasoning is applied to them.
1. The Buddha’s Method: Search the Aggregates
The Buddha’s statement that “no self is found in the aggregates” rests on analysis, not on religious belief. The five aggregates—form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness—are the complete set of components that make up the psychophysical person.
If a self or soul exists, it must be either within these aggregates or outside them. The Buddha’s strategy is to examine each aggregate and ask if it is permanent, under control, and independent. Each aggregate is seen to be impermanent, conditioned, and not subject to mastery, so none of them, nor their combination, can be an unchanging self. This is a simple logical search: the list is complete; the target is not found in the list; therefore the target is not present.
This is the same pattern as analysing any composite thing. The chariot simile shows there is no chariot apart from its parts and their arrangement; “chariot” is a designation that depends on them. In the same way, “person” or “self” is a designation that depends on the aggregates, not an extra entity beyond them.
2. Logical Form: Why Self and Essence Fall Together
The reasoning can be put in a bare logical form:
- If something is truly self or essence, it must be unchanging, independent, and in control.
- Whatever is observed in analysis is changing, dependent, and not in control.
- Therefore, nothing observed is truly self or essence.
The Buddha applies this form directly to the aggregates: because they are impermanent and not masterable, they cannot be “this is mine, this I am, this is my self.” But the structure of the reasoning does not mention “soul” as a special type. It appeals only to conditions, change, and lack of mastery.
Any supposed essence in a thing would face the same test. If the essence is conditioned, it fails by being dependent. If the essence is unconditioned but is supposed to be in a conditioned thing, then it is not found by analysis of that thing. In both cases, the same logic that denies self also denies essence as an intrinsic core.
3. Position A:
Souls Have Special Properties That Essences Lack
Position A claims that the Buddha denied souls but did not deny essence because souls are a special kind of non-existent thing. It says that reasoning shows souls do not exist, but that the same reasoning does not touch essence. It implies that a soul has properties such as consciousness, agency, moral ownership, or continuity that make it different in kind from an essence.
This smuggles in an assumption: that there is a real difference between “soul” and “essence” even when both are admitted to be non-existent. It treats the soul as a non-existent thing with special features and then uses those imagined features to defend essence. This is incoherent. Properties cannot be meaningfully assigned to what is not found at all.
The structure is like saying: “Green flying horses do not exist, but non‑green flying horses do exist, because green flying horses have a special property that non‑green ones lack.” Both are not found. The distinction makes no difference, because both terms refer to nothing. To say that the Buddha denied only one kind of non-existent (soul) while leaving another non-existent (essence) intact is to pretend that the properties of what is not there can constrain logic.
When the Buddha’s method is applied, soul and essence both fail for the same reason: they are not found when we analyse what actually appears, and the conditioned phenomena that do appear do not meet their defining criteria.
4. Position B:
Dependency Applies Only to Persons
Position B claims that the Buddha’s dependency reasoning applies only to persons or mental life. It says that the person has no self because the person is a composite, but that inanimate things can still have intrinsic nature even though they are also composites.
This limitation is arbitrary. The principle of dependent origination states that whenever there is this, that arises; with the arising of this, that arises; and with the cessation of this, that ceases. This is presented as a general law of conditionality, not as a special rule for sentient beings only.
If a chariot is only a set of parts in dependence, and its parts are also dependent on further parts and conditions, then dependence goes “all the way down.” There is no point where an inanimate object suddenly becomes self-existent. To say that dependent origination stops at the boundary between living and non-living is to impose a boundary that the reasoning itself does not supply.
Thus, restricting the Buddha’s analysis to persons is a way to protect essence from scrutiny. It does not come from the logic of dependence itself; it is an external stipulation.
The Complete Argument: No Third Option
Taken together, the logic is:
- The Buddha’s method is to examine what is present—aggregates, components, conditions—and test them against the criteria for self or essence.
- These examined things are found to be impermanent, dependent, and not under mastery, so they cannot be self or essence.
- Nothing beyond these examined things is found, so there is no extra self or essence “in addition” to them.
- Dependent origination and conditionality apply to all conditioned phenomena, not just to persons.
From this, two conclusions follow.
- A person cannot consistently say that the Buddha rejected souls but allowed essences, because the reasoning that denies one denies the other.
- A person also cannot consistently confine dependency logic to persons while excluding inanimate things, because the principle of dependent origination is stated as a general law, not as a human-only rule.
There is no third option in which the Buddha’s analysis is fully accepted and yet essence is kept intact. If the analysis is carried through, what remains is a field of conditioned processes without any unchanging core, whether called self, soul, or essence.