Ask A Buddhist

[notself]

I read it but am trying to digest what it means. I’m not familiar with the term “eternalism” but the excerpted passage seemed to be describing monism. Everything is one so it makes no sense to talk about discrete beings.

Eternalism is the belief that an eternal essence or soul exists unchanging and separate from bodily/mental phenomena.

There is no one substance in Buddhism but just the coming and going of conditioned phenomena. There is no soul separate from bodily/mental existence. There is however bodily/mental phenomena conditioned by action and result of action. The action and result exists within individual bhavanga-sota. Each phenomenon is conditioned but there is no universal phenomenon, no monism, no self independent of conditions.

 

[Bakmoon]

I read it but am trying to digest what it means. I’m not familiar with the term “eternalism” but the excerpted passage seemed to be describing monism. Everything is one so it makes no sense to talk about discrete beings.

Let me try to explain. It isn’t so much that “everything is one” as much as it is “everything is made up of a series of events” and so therefore it is impossible to find any sort of “core” of the human personality. There is the body, which is a series of physical events, and the mind, which is a series of mental events. It is not possible to peel back the layers of this composite and find some sort of unchanging core that just sits around and watches everything around it. If you peel away all the layers of the onion so to speak, you are left with nothing, because you threw away all the layers.

By the way, I am sorry everyone for not responding earlier, but I am currently camping and I thought I would have a good Wi-fi connection, but it actually has been rather spotty and I haven’t been able to respond. I will try to respond as best I can, but I might not be able to until Monday.

 

[InJesusItrust]

No. rinnie is evanescent. The rinnie that was yesterday is gone. The rinnie that will be tomorrow is not yet here. You can never step in the same river twice, because it isn’t the same river and it isn’t the same you.

Buddhism emphasises change over stasis, and change permeates all of Buddhist thinking. As I pointed out with a permanent soul, without change salvation/enlightenment is not possible. Since salvation/enlightenment is possible, then we have to drop our mistaken ideas of permanence.

rossum

So you are saying that “change” is an ultimate truth. Can the truth that things change ever change?

 

[tomarin]

Out of curiosity, what in that passage provided by rossum gives you the idea that all things are one?

It was Notself’s post, not Rossum’s that I was referring to. I’m not really sure what it was about so it’s difficult for me to summarize it, but it seemed to be saying that discrete entities don’t exist. It’s the negation of discreteness that suggested monism to me (if everything is one, then logically discrete entities only appear to be discrete entities, in fact they are made up of the same substance or essence). I’m sorry if this offended you in some way, I’m only trying to grasp some basic idea of what the Buddhist posters are talking about.

 

[tomarin]

Eternalism is the belief that an eternal essence or soul exists unchanging and separate from bodily/mental phenomena.

There is no one substance in Buddhism but just the coming and going of conditioned phenomena. There is no soul separate from bodily/mental existence. There is however bodily/mental phenomena conditioned by action and result of action. The action and result exists within individual bhavanga-sota. Each phenomenon is conditioned but there is no universal phenomenon, no monism, no self independent of conditions.

This is helpful, thank you.

 

[tomarin]

I usually use the simile of a mirage. A mirage looks like water, but it is not what it looks like. It is empty of water.

(shortened by Tomarin)

So what this comes down to, if I understand correctly, is whether an illusion is something or nothing? In other words, we are dealing with reality, but what appears to be real is in fact an illusion according to Buddhism?

 

[Vouthon]

This is all very fascinating!

Ok so let me try and piece all this together:

According to the Buddha, the mind is a complex continuum of fleeting mental states, which fluctuates from moment to moment, as well as from life to life.

Buddhism thus posits a process whereby a stream of concious mental phenomena, comprised of memories, cravings, actions and consequences, passes through a cycle of births and rebirths as different people and creatures, until (hopefully) this individual stream of conciousness receives a “good birth” in a human body, whereby it can free itself from this samsara - the continual emptying of all transient reality whether physical or mental.

Each momentary piece of consciousness which constitutes this changeable process, on passing away, transmits its entire mental energy, all the ingrained and recorded impressions, to its successor - the next host or body. Every fresh conscious being thus consists of the potentialities or deficiencies of its predecessors together with something more. There is therefore, a continuous flow of consciousness like a stream without any interruption, like a river forever emptying into the sea and flowing back out again.

So there is no identical being but there is an identity in process. I am thus led to believe that every person on earth right now has, according to this belief, their own individual stream of concious karmic energy and mental phenomena which is distinct from everyone else? This is surely the case - since nobody can surely have exactly the same karmic record. Everyone has, in past lives, made distinctly different decisions.

Does this identity in process then constitute some kind of “personality” distinct from everyone else which carries on after death?

Where then does personality come into this? I am guessing that in an objective sense it cannot exist, however when a person dies will their karmic energy still be “them” in some real sense (not as a self or soul but as conciousness)? Ie Vouthon will die and be no more but the awareness that Vouthon possessed in this life will re-awaken in another body, through the passing of the mental phenomena which Vouthon inherited from previous and the karmic record which Vouthon created in his life. All of this will “re-ignite” like a candle flame, as the mind of another being somewhere else in the world.

Vouthon thus dies but something of Vouthon, his choices, experiences, thoughts, impulses, desires and other mental phenomena, is transmuted into a new, fresh conciousness which nevertheless still has a definite link to all of this and carries it on. This empty, mental phenomena rolls on and on in an unceasing, endless round of births and rebirths - forever transmuting with every birth yet maintaining true continuity as an individual, distinct stream of concious, mental energy.

Could this bhavanga-sota - not be the true “identity” or ultimate reality of every person? And could not the entering into and awareness of this stream, constitute the deepest aspect of our personhood? Could it not truly be a Buddhist counterpart to the “Ground” spoken of by the mystics - the “nameless abyss”, nameless because it contains no self but an endless round of mental phenomena from various births which has inhabited various people throghout the millenias?

Could this not be what the Mahayana call “Buddha Nature”, describing in positive terms which sounds like a concrete “thing” what is really a process? Could not this endless stream of conciousness truly have the innate ability to transcend itself and attain nirvana which constitutes its “Buddha-hood” or potentiality?

I assume this must be the case since the particular stream of mental energy which (in Buddhist theory) influenced my birth as Vouthon, complete with my characteristics, mental and physical thought processes and inclinations, must be different from Bakmoon’s mental energy, which has followed a different trajectory, series of decisions, experiences etc. down the millenias.

Thus could it be said that Buddhism does in fact believe in “personality” even if continually changing and emptying since it posits continuity of identity in terms of process?

Identity is still identity, whether a process or an unchanging soul.

Have I grasped this correctly?

 

[Vouthon]

I am wondering how all of this fits in with Thomistic philosophy.

Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that there exists three kinds of souls:

1. Vegetative Soul: the life within all living things that is the animating element that we call life.
2. Sensitive Soul: that faculty that gives consciousness to the living being so to enable it to sense its environment and its surroundings and to respond to that environment through the five senses of the body. It encompasses sensation and perception and movement. “…Perception here relies not only on the external senses–seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting–but also on internal senses as well–imagination, common sense, estimation, and the memorative…The internal senses represent the ability of those with Sensitive souls to store, use, and process that obtained knowledge and information……”
3. Rational Soul: this is the soul made in the image of God that is individually created by God and placed into a human being at the moment of conception. This soul is that which allows us to have the attributes of rational thought, creativity, awareness, will etc. It is responsible for reason and thinking.

Plants and trees have a vegetative soul because they are alive but do not have consciousness to respond with the five senses to their surroundings.

Animals have a vegetative soul that animates them and a sensitive soul which gives them consciousness and awareness of their environment and the ability to respond through the senses.

Only humans have all three types of soul. Only humans have the rational soul.

The vegetative soul and the sensitive soul dies. The rational soul because it is not material like the others, having no parts and therefore no depth, height, width etc. cannot die.

Would I be right in suggesting that Buddhism would accept the reality of all three types of souls but reject that the rational soul has a supernatural, spiritual element which grants it the ability to exist in infinity beyond place and time?

Buddhism would view the “rational soul” as being just as changrable, empty and non-concrete as the other two?

The other issue is that Buddhism would believe that the concious energy of the sensitive and rational souls is somehow “passed” along and transmuted into another conciousness in another body.

We know that human beings are made up of earth material. Is it possible that our psyches and senses can be made up of mental phenomena passed from a previous life-form? Could our sensitive soul be part of a “stream of concious energy”?

Certainly Catholicism could not accept the rational soul as being such but the sensitive…hmm…

“… For this rational animal, man, is blended of every form of soul; he is nourished by the vegetative kind of soul, and to the faculty of growth was added that of sense, which stands midway, if we regard its peculiar nature, between the intellectual and the more material essence being as much coarser than the one as it is more refined than the other: then takes place a certain alliance and commixture of the intellectual essence with the subtle and enlightened element of the sensitive nature: so that man consists of these three: as we are taught the like thing by the apostle in what he says to the Ephesians, praying for them that the complete grace of their body and soul and spirit may be preserved at the coming of the Lord; using, the word body for the nutritive part, and denoting the sensitive by the word soul, and the intellectual by spirit. Likewise too the Lord instructs the scribe in the Gospel that he should set before every commandment that love to God which is exercised with all the heart and soul and mind : for here also it seems to me that the phrase indicates the same difference, naming the more corporeal existence heart, the intermediate soul, and the higher nature, the intellectual and mental faculty, mind…”** (St Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, Ch. 8)**

 

[Vouthon]

In one of his letters Saint Theophan the Recluse says, '… ***When God created man, He first formed a body from dust. What was that body? An earthware greyhen or a living body? It was a living body; it was an animal in the form of man with the animal soul. Then God breathed His spirit into him and the animal became man - an angel in the form of man. As it was at that time, so, in the same way, also now men come into being. The souls are born from the parents or are put in through the natural birth, but the spirit is breathed in by God Who is everywhere… When you say man is an animal, do you only mean the meat or the whole animal life? Of course, the whole animal life together with the soul of animal. But adding [the word] ‘rational’ to this [that is, ‘rational animal’], what does this mean? This means that though man, on the one hand, is the same as the animal with the animal soul, on the other hand, he is incomparably higher than animals, as he has ration (/intellect) which perfectly corresponds to to the word ‘spirit’. To say ‘rational animal’ is the same as to say ‘spiritual (lit. spiritualized) animal’. ***

Then he speaks of the ‘organic life’ which exists in different classes of beings- plants, animals and men, but is the same in all of them. The only difference is our mind which he calls ‘spirit’.

The human rational soul corresponds to the ‘spirit’ (pneuma) in I Thessalonians 5:23, the sensible part corresponds to the ‘soul’ (psyche), the vegetative part to the ‘body’ (soma).

So pneuma has a supernatural origin, whereas the origin of psyche and soma is purely natural.

The stuff that’s inside our bodies like our bones, organs, muscles etc. are made of various molecules and atoms. Humans and all other creatures are mostly made of water, so we are mostly made of atoms 13 billion years old.

Could our “sensitive soul” - the internal senses of imagination, common sense, estimation, and the memorative which represent the ability to store, use, and process that obtained knowledge and information - also come from previous life-forms? Our sensitive soul is purely natural.

I don’t think there is science to back up the existence of “mental energy” that is transmuted and passed on like human atoms and other forms of energy, but if there was, then this is the only way I could ever conceive of Catholics accepting something akin to this and it would not be possible to do so for the rational soul.

I am considering this because while reincarnation is clearly impossible - the rational and sensitive souls are both transient, so there is no “soul” that can be passed between bodies - the bodies conception of “rebirth” is different, this thread has shown as much.

The Buddhist teaching interests and intrigues me a lot more actually.

Catholicism does not accept an immortal “life-force” just like Buddhism, that exists in all creatures unchanging. For us vegetative and sensitive souls are transient and material.

Where we differ is the “spirit” breathed by God into man, this spiritual, supernatural quality to man’s soul which differentiates him from other life-forms and ensures that his rational soul does not “return to the earth”.

My spirit, my spiritual soul came from God and will return to him. My vegetative and sensitive soul was produced by nature and is transient and empty like all natural things.

As the Bible says:

“…All that is of earth returns to earth, and what is from above returns above, all streams shall return to the sea…”

- Sirach 40:11

“…I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath/spirit [animal soul], and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is impermanent. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth?..”

• Ecclesiastes 3:21

So the Bible agrees with Buddhism that the “soul” is not immortal but dies in both humans and animals.

Who knows - maybe there is a cycle on earth whereby the mental phenomena of transient sensitive souls “returns to earth” in an endless cycle of transmuting between different beings. Perhaps mine will too!

Maybe Aquinas was slightly off in saying that the vegetative and sensitive souls “die”. Maybe their information does transmute and get passed around. We do know that nature has a way of using itself up and not wasting anything. So perhaps there is mental energy which is “reborn” in other beings.

Nonetheless man’s rational soul has a spiritual character which is not natural but “supernatural” for Christians and so “returns above” as the Book of Sirach explains. It is not part of this cycle (if it exists - and I’m open to it).

I don’t see why its not at least plausible.

 

[rossum]

So you are saying that “change” is an ultimate truth. Can the truth that things change ever change?

There is no ultimate truth, hence change cannot be an ultimate truth. We are confronted with change here and now, so we have to deal with it here and now. Attempting to ignore its presence is an error, and will lead to suffering.

rossum

 

[rossum]

(shortened by Tomarin)

So what this comes down to, if I understand correctly, is whether an illusion is something or nothing? In other words, we are dealing with reality, but what appears to be real is in fact an illusion according to Buddhism?

What appears to be real is real, but not as we conceive it.

Consider how we see something. Light strikes an object and is reflected into our eyes. Our eyes convert the light into electrical impulses in our sensory nerves and transmit them to our brain. Our brain receives these electrical impulses and matches the pattern of the impulses to previously received impulses. Following the pattern-matching process, our brain tells us, “I see a dog”.

The dog is something external to ourselves. The ‘dog’ we see is a result of the pattern matching process inside our brains. Unfortunately, what is inside our brain is different to what is in the external reality. We cannot smell the dog as well as the dog can smell itself. We may associate the internal pattern ‘dog’ with a childhood pet, which has nothing to do with the external dog.

A spider-phobia is another obvious example of an extraneous association. The fear is attached to the internal model, not to the external spider.

The dog is out there, though our perception of it is limited by our senses. The ‘dog’ pattern is inside our heads. There are definite similarities between them, but there are also differences. A very common error is to fail to recognise that these differences exist. Buddhist meditation includes techniques to allow us to distinguish between what is actually out there, and the pattern inside our head. They are two different things.

Failing to recognise the difference can lead to suffering. “You are not the person I married,” is often caused by a mismatch between the internal model of the spouse and the actual person on which the model was based.

rossum

 

[Vouthon]

LOL typo alert!

Above I wrote:

“…the bodies conception of “rebirth” is different, this thread has shown as much. The Buddhist teaching interests and intrigues me a lot more actually…”

I meant to say “the Buddha’s conception of “rebirth” is different” not ‘the bodies’

 

[Vouthon]

You see the vegetative and sensitive or animal souls are not directly created by God.

They are completely natural and produced through the mechanisms of nature ie in animals sexual intercourse.

They do not come around with any direct intervention from God, rather they are simply the result of different natural causes. Who says that animal souls need “die” in the sense of simply cease to exist utterly at the point of death? Doesn’t the Bible suggest that they simply “return” to earth - but could that soul contain mental energy that could be used up elsewhere through a perfectly natural process of cause and effect while the human spirit, to use the language of the Bible, “goes upward” or “above” the temporal, material reality to return to its Maker?

Is there not thus a possibility of there really being “mental energy” that can be passed on, endlessly returning to earth but never transcending it like the rational, human/spiritual soul directly willed by God at the time of conception?

I once watched a program about a Scottish child, aged about 3, who had vivivd memories of living on the island of Barra during World War II. Now, the child had never been to Barra and when it was investigated it was discovered that many of his “descriptions” fitted the life of a child who did actually live there and who drowned in the 1940s. The boy described many of the people correctly without any connection to them physically. Not everything was spot on but it was sure eerie. After the age of about 4 he had no recollection of these “Barra” memories or his “Barra mum” (as opposed to his current mother who was naturally disturbed). The psychologists studying the case had no idea why the child had these memories of living on Barra.

Now this might be complete tosh and coincidence, or even a highly imaginative 3 year old brain, however some Hindus use such studies to try and back up reincarnation (which I regard as not only erroneous but simply implausible and impossible).

However - could it simply be that the Scottish child shared the same mental energy as the Barra child’s “sensitive soul” (whereas his rational soul departed and returned to God upon its death)?

Need a “sensitive soul” necessarily have to just “dissapear” since it cannot exist beyond the world? Could something of it “return to earth” in a different way just like atoms do?

This is probably crazy and none of this has ever come to my head before, so please forgive me if I am talking in looney tunes

BTW I am not saying that humans have three “souls” we have one - but our soul has the powers of the the two inferior souls, such that we do I think have in a sense an “animal soul” as well which dies when we die. I may be completely wrong though!

 

[Contarini]

No. rinnie is evanescent. The rinnie that was yesterday is gone. The rinnie that will be tomorrow is not yet here. You can never step in the same river twice, because it isn’t the same river and it isn’t the same you.

Buddhism emphasises change over stasis, and change permeates all of Buddhist thinking. As I pointed out with a permanent soul, without change salvation/enlightenment is not possible. Since salvation/enlightenment is possible, then we have to drop our mistaken ideas of permanence.

But that’s every bit as much a simplistic caricature as anything that’s been said about Buddhism.

The other side of the coin is that if there’s no permanence, then salvation/enlightenment is not possible, because there’s nothing to be saved/enlightened. If there’s no continuity between the unenlightened Siddhartha and the enlightened Siddhartha, then it makes no sense to say that Siddhartha is enlightened.

Any serious account of the self has to have an account of both change and continuity. Buddhism wrestles with this from one side, because it emphasizes change; classical Christian metaphysics (rooted in Greek philosophy) wrestles with it from the other, emphasizing continuity.

This is simply the Parmenides/Heraclitus dilemma all over again.

Edwin

 

[Vouthon]

No. rinnie is evanescent. The rinnie that was yesterday is gone. The rinnie that will be tomorrow is not yet here. You can never step in the same river twice, because it isn’t the same river and it isn’t the same you.

Buddhism emphasises change over stasis, and change permeates all of Buddhist thinking. As I pointed out with a permanent soul, without change salvation/enlightenment is not possible. Since salvation/enlightenment is possible, then we have to drop our mistaken ideas of permanence.

rossum

Rossum

Catholics do not believe in an “unchanging soul”. In Hinduism there is the concept of an “Atman” - an unchanging, universel soul/self which is the essence of everything. Catholicism rejects this. We believe in a changeable, created soul which nevertheless is made in the Image of Uncreated, Unchanging God thus rendering it immortality - but “not” unchanging.

One of the qualities of the soul is that, since it is created, it is therefore “mutable” (subject to change):

“…The soul, is a living essence, simple, incorporeal, invisible in its proper nature to bodily eyes, immortal, reasoning and intelligent, formless, making use of an organized body, and being the source of its powers of life, and growth, and sensation, and generation, mind being but its purest part and not in any wise alien to it; (for as the eye is to the body, so is the mind to the soul); further it enjoys freedom and volition and energy, and is mutable, that is, it is given to change, because it is created. All these qualities according to nature it has received of the grace of the Creator, of which grace it has received both its being and this particular kind of nature…”

***- Saint John of Damascus (c. 645 – 749), Church Father and Doctor of the Church ***

I am confused as to how you came to the conclusion that we believe in an “unchanging soul”? That is Hinduism not Catholicism. It is heresy to say such a preposterous thing.

Augustine repeatedly asserts that the human soul is changeable and mutable. If it were not so, we verily would be God the Creator - which we are are not.

If Rinnie’s soul could not change then she would be God and we should all worship her, since the Catholic Church teaches that nothing created is unchanging - only God is the same from all eternity and undergoes no change.

It would be the heresy of pantheism to declare than we possessed an unchanging soul.

Apart from the grace of God, we are in ourselves “nothing”. Only God truly exists and has real Being, we are participatory being and pale shadows of true existence, who exist only through the gratuitous favour and love of God who willed us for our own sake and not for his.

We are not pantheists

 

[Vouthon]

“…Augustine held that each soul was immortal, created, immaterial, and changeable…”

- Edward P. Kardas

“…Everything other than God is corruptible, because everything other than God is created, and to be created is to be changeable—and to be changeable is to be corruptible. If you can change, Augustine thinks, then you can change for the worse. Only God is incapable of going bad, because only God is eternally, unchangeably, incorruptibly Good. Everything else is corruptible because it is changeable. This is a thought that takes some getting used to. When Augustine speaks of changeability (or mutability, as the word is often translated), he has in mind a kind of weakness, a vulnerability to corruption and non-being, which is inherent in anything that comes into being. Whatever comes into being inhabits the world of time and change where things can not only be born but grow old, get ruined and die. Since only God never came into being (for he has always possessed eternal being in himself), it follows that only God is free from all possibility of corruption…”

- Philip Carry

In the “City of God”, Saint Augustine condemned those who would claim that the soul was “unchanging”, after discussing those who claim God is material:

“…Those thinkers must rank below the Platonists, as we have said. And so must those who blush to assert that God is material but would suppose him to be of the same nature as the mind of man. They are not worried by the excessive mutability of the human soul, a changeability which it would be blasphemous to ascribe to the divine nature. They retort, ‘It is the body that changes the nature of the soul; in itself the soul is unchanging’. They might as well say, ‘It is an external material object which wounds the flesh: in itself the flesh is invulnerable’. Nothing at all can change the immutable; what can be changed by an external object is susceptible of change, and cannot properly be called immutable…If they maintain that the soul is co-eternal with God, how can it experience a change to unhappiness, to a condition from which it has been exempt for all eternity?..They would not have babbled like this if they had believed in the truth, that the nature of God is unchangeable and completely incorruptible, and that nothing can do it harm; and if they had held, according to sound Christian teaching, that the soul, which could change for the worse through free choice, and could be corrupted by sin, is not a part of God, nor of the same nature as God, but is created by him…[The philosophers on the other hand] realized that nothing changeable can be the Supreme God; and therefore in their search for the Supreme God, they raised their eyes above all mutable souls…”

- Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430 C.E.), The City of God, Church Father and Doctor of the Church

I hope that my discussion of the mystical concept of the “Ground” hasn’t led Rossum to think that we believe in an “unchanging soul”…?

The Ground is a highly mystical understandin of the “Image of God” in man, it does not deny his created, changeable nature.

 

[stewstew03]

No. rinnie is evanescent. The rinnie that was yesterday is gone. The rinnie that will be tomorrow is not yet here. You can never step in the same river twice, because it isn’t the same river and it isn’t the same you.

Buddhism emphasises change over stasis, and change permeates all of Buddhist thinking. As I pointed out with a permanent soul, without change salvation/enlightenment is not possible. Since salvation/enlightenment is possible, then we have to drop our mistaken ideas of permanence.

rossum

Well, if change is possible, it seems that at some point rinnie could have a soul. There is no permanent state of corporeality is there?

 

[stewstew03]

But that’s every bit as much a simplistic caricature as anything that’s been said about Buddhism.

The other side of the coin is that if there’s no permanence, then salvation/enlightenment is not possible, because there’s nothing to be saved/enlightened. If there’s no continuity between the unenlightened Siddhartha and the enlightened Siddhartha, then it makes no sense to say that Siddhartha is enlightened.

Any serious account of the self has to have an account of both change and continuity. Buddhism wrestles with this from one side, because it emphasizes change; classical Christian metaphysics (rooted in Greek philosophy) wrestles with it from the other, emphasizing continuity.

This is simply the Parmenides/Heraclitus dilemma all over again.

Edwin

Great point. Furthermore, how do we know that enlightenment is not an illusion? Or that change is simply an illusion?

NB: I am not denigrating Buddhism because I do appreciate the richness of Eastern philosophy.

 

[Shiranui117]

It was Notself’s post, not Rossum’s that I was referring to. I’m not really sure what it was about so it’s difficult for me to summarize it, but it seemed to be saying that discrete entities don’t exist. It’s the negation of discreteness that suggested monism to me (if everything is one, then logically discrete entities only appear to be discrete entities, in fact they are made up of the same substance or essence). I’m sorry if this offended you in some way, I’m only trying to grasp some basic idea of what the Buddhist posters are talking about.

Oh, don’t worry, you caused no offense, I was just wondering where you got monism from. You’re all good.

 

[Nooj]

If you peel away all the layers of the onion so to speak, you are left with nothing, because you threw away all the layers.

i think that’s a brilliant analogy.