Buddha himself, in answer to the question of whether a self exists or not, never put forward a definite position so as not to cause new concepts to arise that would be irrelevant and obstructive for spiritual practice. Thus the teaching of no self is to be understood more as a fruitful pedagogical device than as a philosophical doctrine. Nevertheless in the course of the development of the Buddhist system of thought, this came more and more to be an unequivocal denial of the existence of a self.
