Core tenet of Buddhism

Nothing has a fixed self.

Anatta — persons are processes; clinging to a self is the root error.

Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Anatta, the teaching most often misread. It does not deny that you exist; it denies that any fixed, unchanging kernel of you exists. What is found on inspection is five bundles of process — form, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness — each changing, none in charge. The doctrine is meant to be verified in meditation, not believed from a page.

From the sources — the passages this rests on; concise renderings, cited

Form is not self. Were form self, it would not lead to affliction, and one could say of it: let my form be thus.
Anattalakkhana Sutta — SN 22.59
The second sermon, addressed to the first five monks.

Just as "chariot" is a name for axle, wheels, frame, and pole in a certain relation, so "person" is a name for the five bundles in relation.
Milindapañha — the chariot dialogue
King Milinda and the monk Nagasena.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas

Death is nothing to us. Epicureanism Go deeper →

Time is a wheel, and this is the worst quarter of it. Hinduism Go deeper →

Time is a wheel with no beginning. Jainism Go deeper →

Emptiness runs all the way down. Mahāyāna Go deeper →

Zhuangzi dreams the butterfly. Taoism · story Read it in full →

Ise, rebuilt every twenty years. Shinto · rite Go deeper →

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