The Seba library treats Anatta in 7 passages, across 5 authors (including Armstrong, Karen, Schwartz, Richard C, Spiegelman, J. Marvin).
why should they be so happy to hear that the self that we all cherish does not exist? … people accepted anatta with enormous relief and delight … When people lived as though the ego did not exist, they found that they were happier.
Armstrong argues that anatta was received not with dread but with liberating joy, because living beyond ego-identification produces measurable experiential enlargement.
, Buddha, 2000thesis
many of these early monks achieved enlightenment precisely by contemplating the doctrine of anatta… the Buddha denied that there was any such thing as a constant personality… the obstinate belief in a sacred, irreducible nub of selfhood as an 'unskillful' delusion.
Armstrong demonstrates that anatta functions not merely as metaphysics but as the operative meditative instrument through which enlightenment is attained.
, Buddha, 2000thesis
the more closely we examine ourselves, the harder it becomes to find anything that we can pinpoint as a fixed entity. The human personality was not a static being… Put under the microscope of yogic analysis, each person was a process.
Armstrong reconstructs the Buddha's phenomenological argument for anatta: rigorous yogic introspection reveals personality as a dynamic process rather than a stable entity.
, Buddha, 2000thesis
Buddhism refers to such a state as anatta, or no-self. These are times when you become so absorbed in an activity that your body moves effortlessly and you lose a sense of separateness.
Schwartz assimilates anatta into IFS theory as the 'wave state' of Self, equating it with Csikszentmihalyi's flow and distinguishing it from the particle-state Self-leadership of normal therapeutic work.
, No Bad Parts, 2021thesis
Realization of the three aspects of dharma, i.e., impermanence (annica), dis-ease (dukkha), and no-separate entity (anatta), leads to the fourth state, or prajna.
Spiegelman positions anatta as the third mark of existence within a Jungian-Buddhist synthesis, where the triad of impermanence, suffering, and no-self together catalyze the emergence of prajna.
, Buddhism and Jungian Psychology, 1985supporting
Anatman (Pali: Anatta) 47f
Watts catalogues anatta as the Pali equivalent of Sanskrit anatman, treating both as cross-referenced doctrinal entries within his comparative framework of Zen and Buddhist thought.
, The Way of Zen, 1957supporting
the only absolute attainment is in absolute abandonment… if the Self in its pristine state is free, how did it become bound?
Campbell stages the proto-Buddha's rejection of Arada's teaching of a purified supreme Self, implicitly framing the movement toward anatta as a dialectical refusal of Vedantic selfhood.
, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962aside