And, indeed, it was when they heard the Buddha explaining anatta that all five bhikkhus attained their full enlightenment and became Arahants. The texts tell us that this teaching filled their hearts with joy. This might seem strange: why should they be so happy to hear that the self that we all cherish does not exist? The Buddha knew that anatta could be frightening. An outsider, hearing the doctrine for the first time, might panic, thinking: “I am going to be annihilated and destroyed; I will no longer exist!” But the Pali texts show that people accepted anatta with enormous relief and delight, as the five bhikkhus did, and this, as it were, “proved” that it was true. When people lived as though the ego did not exist, they found that they were happier. They experienced the same kind of enlargement of being as came from a practice of the “immeasurables,” which were designed to dethrone the self from the center of our private universe and put other beings in its place. Egotism is constricting; when we see things only from a selfish point of view, our vision is limited. To live beyond the reach of greed, hatred, and the fears that come with an acute anxiety about our status and survival is liberating. Anatta may sound bleak when proposed as an abstract idea, but when it was lived out it transformed people’s lives. By living as though they had no self, people found that they had conquered their egotism and felt a great deal better. By understanding anatta with the “direct knowledge” of a yogin, they found that they had crossed over into a richer, fuller existence. Anatta must, therefore, tell us something true about the human condition, even though we cannot prove empirically that the self does not exist.

The Buddha believed that a selfless life would introduce men and women to Nibbana. Monotheists would say that it would bring them into the presence of God. But the Buddha found the notion of a personalized deity too limiting, because it suggested that the supreme Truth was only another being. Nibbana was neither a personality nor a place like Heaven. The Buddha always denied the existence of any absolute principle or Supreme Being, since this could be another thing to cling to, another fetter and impediment to enlightenment. Like the doctrine of the Self, the notion of God can also be used to prop up and inflate the ego. The most sensitive monotheists in Judaism, Christianity and Islam would all be aware of this danger and would speak of God in ways that are reminiscent of the Buddha’s reticence about Nibbana. They would also insist that God was not another being, that our notion of “existence” was so limited that it was more accurate to say that God did not exist and that “he” was Nothing. But on a more popular level, it is certainly true that “God” is often reduced to an idol created in the image and likeness of “his” worshippers. If we imagine God to be a being like ourselves writ large, with likes and dislikes similar to our own, it is all too easy to make “him” endorse some of our most uncharitable, selfish and even lethal hopes, fears and prejudices. This limited God has thus contributed to some of the worst religious atrocities in history. The Buddha would have described belief in a deity who gives a seal of sacred approval to our own selves as “unskillful”: it could only embed the believer in the damaging and dangerous egotism that he or she was supposed to transcend. Enlightenment demands that we reject any such false prop. It seems that a “direct” yogic understanding of anatta was one of the chief ways in which the early Buddhists experienced Nibbana. And, indeed, the Axial Age faiths all insist in one way or another that we will only fulfil ourselves if we practice total self-abandonment. To go into religion to “get” something, such as a comfortable retirement in the afterlife, is to miss the point. The five bhikkhus who attained enlightenment in the Deer Park had understood this at a profound level.

Now they had to bring the Dhamma to others. As the Buddha himself had learned, an understanding of the First Noble Truth of dukkha meant empathizing with the sorrow of others; the doctrine of anatta implied that an enlightened person must live not for her- or himself but for others. There were now six Arahants, but they were still too few to bring light to a world engulfed in pain. Then, seemingly out of the blue, the Buddha’s little sangha got an influx of new members. The first was Yasa, the son of a rich merchant of Varanasi. Like the young Gotama he had lived in the lap of luxury, but one night he awoke to find his servants lying asleep all round his bed, looking so ugly and unseemly that he was filled with disgust. The fact that other texts, such as the Nidana Katha, would later, without apology, tell exactly the same tale about the young Gotama shows the archetypal nature of the story. It was a stylized way of describing the alienation that so many people in the Ganges region were experiencing. The Pali story tells us that Yasa felt sick at heart and that he cried in distress: “This is terrifying! Horrible!” The world seemed suddenly profane, meaningless and, therefore, unbearable. At once, Yasa decided to “Go Forth” and seek something better. He slipped on a pair of gold slippers, crept out of his father’s house, and made his way to the Deer Park, still muttering: “Terrifying! Horrible!” Then he came upon the Buddha, who had risen early and was enjoying a walk in the cool light of dawn. With the enhanced mental power of an enlightened man, the Buddha recognized Yasa, and motioned him to a seat, saying with a smile: “It is not terrifying; it is not horrible. Come and sit down, Yasa, and I will teach you the Dhamma.”

The Buddha’s serenity and gentleness reassured Yasa at once. He no longer felt that sickening dread, but was happy ‘ and hopeful. With his heart joyful and at peace, he was in exactly the right mood for enlightenment. He took off his slippers and sat down beside the Buddha, who instructed him in the Middle Way, step by step, beginning with very basic teaching about the importance of avoiding tanha and sensual pleasure, and describing the benefits of the holy life. But when he paw that Yasa was receptive and ready, he went on to teach him the Four Noble Truths. As Yasa listened, “the pure vision of the Dhamma rose up in him,” and the truths sank into his soul, as easily, we are told, as a dye penetrates and colors a clean piece of cloth. Once Yasa’s mind had been “dyed” by the Dhamma, there was no way of separating the two. This was “direct knowledge,” because Yasa had experienced the Dhamma at such a profound level that he had wholly identified with it. It had transformed him and “dyed” his entire being. This would be a common experience when people heard the Dhamma for the first time, especially when instructed by the Buddha himself. They felt that the Dhamma fit their needs perfectly, that it was entirely natural and congenial to them, and that, in some sense, they had always known it. We do not find in the Pali texts any agonized or dramatic conversions, similar to St. Paul ’s on the road to Damascus. Any such wrenching experience would have been regarded by the Buddha as “unskillful.” People must be in tune with their natures, as he himself had been under the rose-apple tree.

Just as Yasa had become a “stream-enterer,” the Buddha noticed an older merchant coming toward them and realized that this must be Yasa’s father; he then had recourse to the iddhi or spiritual powers that were thought to come with advanced proficiency in yoga, and made Yasa disappear. Yasa’s father was greatly distressed; the whole household was searching for Yasa, but he had followed the print of the golden slippers which brought him directly to the Buddha. Again, the Buddha made the merchant sit down, hinting that he would see Yasa very soon, and instructed the father as he had the son. The merchant was immediately impressed: “Lord, that is superb! Quite superb!” he cried. “The Dhamma has been made so clear that it is as though you are holding up a lamp in the darkness and putting right something that has gone profoundly wrong.” He was then the first to make what has since become known as the Triple Refuge: an assertion of complete confidence in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha of bhikkhus. He also became one of the first lay followers, who continued to live as a householder but practiced a modified form of the Buddhist method.