Anattā
anattā (sct. anātman)
The non-self: nothing in the aggregates that make up experience is a permanent and substantial self. The third of the three marks of existence, and a direct negation of the Brahmanic *ātman*. Fernand Hû renders it with a periphrasis: *« All forms are without substantial reality. »* What is denied is substance, not experience.
« Toutes les formes sont sans réalité substantielle. » Lorsqu’on est bien pénétré de ce fait, on est délivré de la douleur. C’est là la voie de la purification.
The Pali word anattā, like anicca, is a negation: an-attā, that which is not attā—the self, the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit ātman. The term is a rejoinder: where the Upaniṣads seek beneath the flux a permanent self, identical to brahman, the Buddha declares that none of the compounds of experience deserve that name.
Fernand Hû lacks a French word for this; he renders it with a philosopher’s circumlocution: “All forms are without substantial reality.” Substance is a term of art, but it hits the mark—what anattā denies is precisely the permanent substratum, that which would remain identical beneath change. Note the expansion in verse 279: the two preceding verses address “the aggregates,” while this one speaks of “all forms”—the mark of non-self admits no exception.
Like the other two marks, anattā is a lever, not a thesis: to be “thoroughly penetrated” by it frees one from suffering, for craving fastens onto a “me” and a “mine” that scrutiny dissolves.
It must ≠ the nihilistic negation of the subject: the Dhammapada never stops addressing someone who watches, meditates, purifies, and reaps the fruit of their actions. What is denied is neither experience nor responsibility—only the substantial core assumed to underlie them. Anattā does not say “no one is there”; it says no permanent thing abides.