Early Buddhism — Anātman, Dependent Origination, and the Middle Path

The Buddha did not reject the Indian metaphysical framework — he radicalised it. Karma, rebirth, saṃsāra, liberation: all accepted. But the presupposition of that framework — that there is a permanent, unchanging self (ātman) doing the karmic actions and accumulating the rebirths — this he denied.

Instead: the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) — form, feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness — constitute what we call a 'person'. None is the self. Together they do not constitute a self either. What we call 'I' is a conventional designation for a causally connected process, not a substance.

All phenomena arise in dependence on conditions (pratītyasamutpāda). Nothing has independent, intrinsic existence. The twelve-linked chain of dependent origination traces the arising of suffering from ignorance through craving, attachment, and becoming to birth, aging, and death.

The liberating insight: since suffering arises from conditions, it can cease when those conditions cease. Liberation is not an achievement but a cessation — the extinguishing (nirvāṇa, literally 'blowing out') of the conditions that sustain the suffering process.