 The chapter begins with a brief statement of the soteriological purpose of the treatise, and something of a definition of the Buddha’s teachings. Vasubandhu says that for outsiders (meaning outsiders to Buddhism), there is no possibility of liberation, because all other systems impose a false construct of a self upon what is really only the continuum of aggregates (skandha). Since grasping the self generates the mental afflictions (kleśa), liberation from suffering is impossible for one who holds onto the false, non-Buddhist view that the self has independent reality.