The denial of a permanent self, as well as the refusal to treat  persons as referring to anything real and permanent, forms an  integral part of the Buddhist analysis of consciousness. The frequent use of indexicals such as ‘I’ (ahaṃ) and  ‘mine’ (mama) does not indicate that the Buddha  accepts the conventional reality of persons either. Rather, as  Collins (1982, 72) suggests, a good way to avoid such  misapprehensions is to offer more elegant translations of Pāli  and Sanskrit compounds in which the term self (atta,  ātma) is used. For instance, ‘master of  himself’ (attādhīna) could be also rendered  as ‘free’ or ‘independent,’ ‘at peace  with himself’ (khematta) could be translated as  ‘tranquil,’ while ‘self-guarded’  (rakkhitatta) could be simply translated as  ‘prudent’.