ANATMAN (non-being)
The Buddha’s term for nonexistence. In Neighboring Faiths, Winfried Corduan elaborates: “The moment of salvation occurs when the person comes to realize his place of non-self in the void. This is enlightenment . . . It is sometimes said that self-extinction is the goal of Buddha’s philosophy; it would be better to put it as realizing one’s own self-extinctedness. Nonexistence is the reality; one simply has to become aware of it.” (p. 223).
Virtually all pre-Buddhist sacred texts of other religions disagree. Humankind from cultures around the world have long understood the existence and eternal nature of the human soul, an afterlife, and a creator or sky-god.
Interestingly, God’s very name—Yahweh, the “I Am”—suggests personhood (I) and existence (Am). In this regard Buddhism is more opposite of Judeo-Christian belief and nearly all other religions than the most nihilistic system of atheism.
“God . . . breathed into (Adam’s) nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7).
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