Abhidhamma teaching approaches the question of self by taking apart experience with great precision, showing that what is called a “person” is only a conventional designation for a stream of conditioned phenomena. At the level of ultimate reality (paramattha-sacca), there are only dhammas: material phenomena (rūpa), moments of consciousness (citta), mental factors (cetasika), and the unconditioned element, nibbāna. These dhammas are impersonal events rather than enduring substances, arising and ceasing according to specific causal laws. Terms such as “self,” “being,” or “person” belong to the realm of conceptual designation (paññatti), useful for communication but not pointing to any independent, permanent entity. The Abhidhamma thus treats the notion of self as a conceptual overlay on an impersonal process.

This analysis is further clarified through the five aggregates (khandha): form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness. Each aggregate is examined as impermanent, conditioned, and devoid of any inner controller or essence. None of these aggregates, taken singly or together, can rightly be regarded as “me” or “mine,” because each arises due to conditions and passes away when those conditions cease. The illusion of a unified self emerges when these aggregates are grasped as a solid identity, rather than seen as a composite of fleeting phenomena. By exposing the aggregates in this way, Abhidhamma underscores anattā, the absence of a permanent self within or behind experience.

A key feature of this perspective is the emphasis on momentariness (khaṇika): all conditioned dhammas endure only for a single mind-moment before vanishing. Continuity is explained not by an underlying substance, but by a causal flow in which one moment conditions the next. Intention, choice, and subjective experience are thus understood as conditioned processes, not the actions of an independent inner agent. The detailed treatment of dependent origination (paṭicca-samuppāda) and conditional relations (paccaya) reinforces this, portraying a web of interdependent events rather than a self directing them from behind the scenes. In this light, what seems like a stable “I” is more akin to a pattern traced by causes and conditions than a fixed entity.

Abhidhamma analysis also extends to the processes of cognition, showing that what appears as a unified, continuous experience is in fact a series of discrete consciousness-moments at various sense-doors and the mind-door. Each moment of seeing, hearing, thinking, or feeling arises due to specific conditions and then ceases, leaving no enduring subject that owns these experiences. Insight practice grounded in this analysis involves contemplating all dhammas as impermanent (anicca), unsatisfactory (dukkha), and non-self (anattā). As understanding deepens, the search for a controller or owner within the flow of phenomena yields nothing substantial, and attachment to the idea of a self begins to loosen. In this way, the Abhidhamma’s analytical and philosophical teachings serve as a finely honed tool for seeing through the illusion of self and opening to a liberating vision of reality as a dynamic, selfless process.