The thesis of this book is epoch-making. While no one doubts that the Buddha denied the atman, the self, the question is: Which atman? Buddhism, as understood in the modern era, has taken this to be the universal atman taught in the Hindu Upanisads, equivalent to brahman. What we find in the Buddha's words as recorded in the Buddhist scriptures, however, is only a denial of any permanent self in the ever-changing aggregates that form a person. In decades of teaching, the Buddha had many opportunities to clearly deny the impersonal universal atman if that was his intention. He did not do...