The author devotes a good part of his book to the elaboration of the anatta doctrine; he states that the Buddha sought for the atta in the indirect way, by taking away from the atta everything that is not the atta. The Buddha followed this way so radically and with so much success, that whatever is cognizable revealed itself to him as anatta. He says: "You teach the atta, but I teach what the atta is not. You speak about the atta, but I speak of anatta; in short, you have the atta-method, the atta-vada, whereas I have the anatta-method, the anatta-vada."