Happy new year beautiful people lol..    So what is ANYTHING. period? ? To relate to this question you must fathom that the present moment is Completely mysterious and unknown to you. I mean sure you know what a tree is and what a sun is or what colors are (or you think so) .. But the very being of existence itself is a total mind blow. You need to become conscious of that or otherwise I can't help you. ?   Take any perception.. Could be a sound.. Or a visual.. A feeling or anything.. Now focus your attention on the feeling of it.. And now wonder what is this?  ? First of all notice that it's not what you think it is. Because thoughts are a different perception. ? Do this with everything. Such that you strip the whole universe from all  your thoughts about it.  Universe - thoughts  =??  So now you have the whole universe.. All the visuals and the objects etc  exactly the same as always.. But without any narrative whatsoever describing it. Now tell me what is that?  Lol ? remember you can't use thoughts because thoughts are not "it".  I will say it's just is what it is. And it's completely unexplainable. Just pure irreducible magic.  Will use analogy of a dream.. If you were dreaming we could ask what is this dream? What is the substance of the dream? How it came about? There is a direct answer and indirect answer. The indirect answer is it's a hallucination happening in your brain in the waking world. But see we just explained one appearance by another appearance. So we didn't really explain anything. Because the point is what is appearance itself? ? Same thing about this present moment.. If you explain it by atoms and brains.. Or by Gods up in the clouds or simulation theory etc.... You still basically didn't explain anything. Because you've just replaced this unexplainable appearance with another unexplainable appearance.   The direct answer to what appearance is or what reality is..... Is it's exactly just how it is and it's a total mystery. Pure magic. And you will never explain it away. Not because of lack in your explanatory tools. But because that's just how it is. But most people have a hard time digesting this.