For the Buddha, impermanence was one of the three fundamental marks of existence, the other two being suffering and the non-self.

The Vedic and the Shakti beliefs of the self-existent Being were soundly rejected by the Buddha 2,500 years ago. The Buddha therefore came to be considered a denier of Self/Being (nastika) by the Vedic schools.

While the Madhyamaka school believed everything had an empty existence, the Yogachara philosophers of the Indian Mahayana tradition proposed that the representations of consciousness alone (vijnapti matra) were real.