Another thing that I don’t quite like about that definition is that it looks like it’s saying “not and” which is not quite the thing? Like I can look at that and go “oh, okay, my separate independent acausal autonomous self can be in reality, because it’s impermanent.” Instead I want it to be something like “the self is temporary instead of permanent, embedded instead of separate, dependent instead of independent, causal instead of acausal, <> instead of autonomous” (where I’m not quite sure what Ingram is hoping to contrast autonomous with).
Also, since I’m thinking about this, one of the things that I like about “observation” / think is a big part of Buddhist thinking that is useful to clearly explain to people, is that this is (as I understand it) not an axiom that you use to build your model of the world, but a hypothesis that you are encouraged to check for yourself (in the same way that we might have physics students measure the amount of time it takes for objects to drop, and (ideally) not really expect them to believe our numbers without checking them themselves). “You think your self isn’t made of parts? Maybe you should pay attention to X, and see if you still think that afterwards.”
Note that Ingram’s sentence there is characterizing emptiness (suññata), which is a strict generalization of no-self (anatta). (In particular, it weaves in impermance, and means to apply universally to any structure in our map, not merely to selves.)
One way of looking at those various contrasts you pull out is in terms of various ordering relations. There’s a temporal order (where everything in our map has predecessors and successors, rather than being eternal), an ontological order (where everything in our map has parts and is a part of other things, rather than being indivisible or disconnected), and a causal order (where everything has causes and conditions, rather than being autonomous).
Regarding your latter paragraph, the Buddhist keyword for this attribute of dharmas is “ehipassika”, translating as “inviting you to come see for yourself”.
Another thing that I don’t quite like about that definition is that it looks like it’s saying “not and” which is not quite the thing? Like I can look at that and go “oh, okay, my separate independent acausal autonomous self can be in reality, because it’s impermanent.” Instead I want it to be something like “the self is temporary instead of permanent, embedded instead of separate, dependent instead of independent, causal instead of acausal, <> instead of autonomous” (where I’m not quite sure what Ingram is hoping to contrast autonomous with).
Also, since I’m thinking about this, one of the things that I like about “observation” / think is a big part of Buddhist thinking that is useful to clearly explain to people, is that this is (as I understand it) not an axiom that you use to build your model of the world, but a hypothesis that you are encouraged to check for yourself (in the same way that we might have physics students measure the amount of time it takes for objects to drop, and (ideally) not really expect them to believe our numbers without checking them themselves). “You think your self isn’t made of parts? Maybe you should pay attention to X, and see if you still think that afterwards.”
Note that Ingram’s sentence there is characterizing emptiness (suññata), which is a strict generalization of no-self (anatta). (In particular, it weaves in impermance, and means to apply universally to any structure in our map, not merely to selves.)
One way of looking at those various contrasts you pull out is in terms of various ordering relations. There’s a temporal order (where everything in our map has predecessors and successors, rather than being eternal), an ontological order (where everything in our map has parts and is a part of other things, rather than being indivisible or disconnected), and a causal order (where everything has causes and conditions, rather than being autonomous).
Regarding your latter paragraph, the Buddhist keyword for this attribute of dharmas is “ehipassika”, translating as “inviting you to come see for yourself”.