 The second, “descriptive” soteriological process involved in the categorization of dharmas reveals the fluid nature of sentient experience and validates the fundamental Buddhist teaching of not-self (Skt., anātman, Pali, anatta). The increasingly detailed enumerations of dharmas demonstrate that no essence or independent self could be found in any phenomenon or its constituents, since all aspects of experience are impermanent, arising and passing away subject to numerous causes and conditions. Even the handful dharmas that are categorized as unconditioned (that is, having no cause and no effect) are shown to be not-self. The practice of the discrimination of dharmas thus undermines the apparently solid world we emotionally and intellectually grasp at that is replete with objects of desire and attachment. “Try to grasp the world of the Dhammasaṅgaṇi, or the Paṭṭhāna,” Gethin notes (1992B, 165), “and it runs through one’s fingers.”