Unlike Hindus, Buddhists do not believe that within human beings and other life forms there is a permanent, indestructible and absolute entity called a soul or atman. Therefore, Buddhists reject the Hindu doctrine of atman, claiming that such ideas are fabricated by humans in order to deny their impermanence. Buddha taught that the idea of an eternal self is a misleading belief that is ultimately harmful, producing negative notions of "me" and "mine" and thereby providing the psychological basis for desire, attachment, and hatred. In short, Buddha described the self as the root of all evil, and characterized the attachments it creates as detractors from one's attainment of nirvana. This denial of the self at so thorough a philosophical and ontological extent marks Buddhism as unique among the other world religions.