The most important and far-reaching difference between the Buddha and Brahmanism is that he did not speak of Ātman and Brahman, but instead taught the doctrine of anātman or no-self. Instead of teaching people to discern a permanent, fixed, independent selfhood, the Buddha taught how to relinquish attachment to self by pointing out that the self is just a label given to the five ever changing and mutually interdependent aggregates of form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. The Buddha pointed out that none of these five aggregates has any permanence. They all function in a constant state of flux. Additionally, they must all function in tandem. Any one of the five aggregates would be unable to exist without the other four. This lack of a stable basis for existence precludes any kind of peace or security that depends on something substantial and abiding. The life of the five aggregates is a dynamic interrelated process, and one who seeks some uninterrupted satisfaction from this process will only find suffering instead. Because the five aggregates are impermanent and lead to suffering, they are said to be without a self. Specifically, this means that one cannot attribute to them the permanently abiding and happy self that was the goal of the religious sages and mystics of the Upanishads. A provisional self can be attributed in an abstract way to the life process, but an actual thing or substance called a self cannot be found within the process. Nor can one meaningfully talk about a self apart from the five aggregates because such a self would be a mere abstraction with no substance or empirical reality to back it up. The conclusion is that the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness are characterized by the three marks of impermanence, suffering and non-self. In this way, the Buddha revealed the vanity of the idea of a permanently abiding happy self. Once one ceases to think in terms of such a self, then one is free from all the compulsions, fears and desires that go along with the assumption that there is such a self to find, protect, or appease. One then becomes an arhat, or “worthy one,” who will no longer suffer from the cycle of birth and death.