How do I avoid the "What does Father want?" problem

Question

I have recent experience with asking questions with what I thought were well-known terms, only to see the words understood differently. Terminology and interpretation seem to come up A LOT on the SE sites. And, in the world in general. By the way. Hmm...

When I was a child, I ran in to this scenario with my father often: [contrived example] "Get me a fork." (I run to grab a dinner fork and return it to him. "No, I meant a serving fork. (I look puzzled) He says: "If you didn't know, why didn't you ask?" But for me, there was never any doubt. I didn't interpret or interpolate, or guess or even waver a bit. I would have bet my very life that he wanted a dinner fork. [end of example]

So, when we read words, we understand them in the way we are accustomed, and the writer might understand different. It never occurs to anyone that a difference is there, until communication breaks down. Is it possible to avoid wasting time and energy on this kind of thing? Skeptics.SE requires some very definite research and references to establish the validity and content of every single question. I think this is irritating, but for them it might be necessary.

For the field of Buddhism, which has lots of specific terminology, perhaps we need something similar when establishing what a question is about?

Answer 1

This is a site about Buddhism so the terminology used here is Buddhist terminology.

If one is not familiar with this terminology, the best thing would be to learn about it, so that one can understand the framework of questions and answers on the site.

Terminology on Buddhism SE cannot change into non-buddhist terminology since that would create obstruction for the entire frame of reference that this SE is working within.

The best advice I can think of, is to try to learn the Buddhist terminology so in the case that one is a non-buddhist, one understands from what point of view Buddhism deals with questions.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Is this a "Father" from Transactional Analysis or something? Anyway, to continue ...

I would have bet my very life that he wanted a dinner fork.

If places at the dinner table were already set, so that he already a dinner fork, why would he be asking for a dinner fork?

Ditto if he is about to serve: if he asks for a fork then, it's for a serving fork.

After you've practised helping to lay the table, after being taught to do so, seeing people at the table daily, you may understand (when you look at it) what's there, what's missing, and what's expected.

See also shared (or 'joint') attention which is part of 'early development'.

But for me, there was never any doubt.

You assumed (wrongly) that you understood?

So, when we read words, we understand them in the way we are accustomed

I guess many users on this site are multi-lingual (not anglophone). You have "no comprende" as a handle, but I don't see why you'd think there's a one-to-one mapping between words and meaning.

Naturally you do understand something, automatically (parsing language is part of your brain's "firmware"); but it may be better to assume that understanding is provisional.

There isn't (a single meaning) even in English. If I said even the most mundane phrase, "go to the store", that might mean (in certain specialized contexts) to go to the private storage (e.g. "larder"), the commercial store (e.g. "shop"), the military store (e.g. "PX or armoury"), a web site (e.g. Amazon.com), or possibly some data store.

You mentioned "Imaginary Icebergs" yesterday which might be figurative poetry. I try to be more of a technical writer (e.g. of user manuals) than a literary author (e.g. of fiction).

Anyway if you're trying to learn something new then you ought to be open to (even looking for) new meaning (and if you're not trying to learn something new, and about Buddhism, I ask myself why you're posting a question).

For the field of Buddhism, which has lots of specific terminology, perhaps we need something similar when establishing what a question is about?

I think that many questions I ask are about specific terminology, or use specific terminology, whether in English like ...

• What is "rebirth"?
• What is "deathless"?

... or in Pali (which I understand to be a language, some of words of which Buddhists have tried to use in a specific way), like,

• What is "effluent (Āsava)"
• What is "identity-view (sakkāya-diṭṭhi)

Skeptics.SE requires some very definite research and references to establish the validity and content of every single question.

Well that may be a good idea.

Today for example I read an English translation of a sutta which mentioned "liberation".

I found another translation of that sutta and it said "release".

I looked at the Pali version of the sutta and it said "something-vimutti".

So I learned that vimutti is a word.

Look that up in a Glossary and it's given as "deliverance".

IMO it's not a very famous word (I don't know why but nirvana/nibanna is more famous, isn't it?).

Still perhaps it's an important word.

I can search for that word (e.g. using Google, and/or on Access to Insight).

I can search for it on this web site.

If I still don't understand it or have a question about it, then I can (and might) ask about it on the site.

Having done that "definite research" I might have formed a specific, better, understandable question.

Furthermore I can give a reference (i.e. to a specific word like vimutti, to a sutta which uses it, or to an article which explains it and that I still don't fully understand).

Doing that might still be hit-and-miss, but it's making an effort.

(Generally I dislike re-reading my questions but I like people reading people's answers to them ... I find my questions are pénible so I try not to inflict them on people often, but the answers are treasure).

---

Another type of question (which some people like and might prefer that you ask) is when you try to practice Buddhism, and then have a question about the practice.

More like the StackOverflow kind of site, which is less about theory, but where you ask practical problems, solving problems in practice.

Answer 3

Is it possible to avoid wasting time and energy on this kind of thing?

You can ask here on meta if your question makes sense to other people and if they are understanding as you expect.

Other than that, you can get a sense from the answers of where people are drifting. And if the answers are still insufficient and you feel at lost on how to formulate your question in a different way, you can come to conclusion that the only thing left to do is study the subject at hand and clear your doubts. Moreover, a few paragraph long of text are often unable to properly convey hard-to-understand information. From what I see, many answers for your last question provided links, to wikipedia, to articles, and to books.

In that sense, they did provide some material where the reader can look up further -- which in some sense also means "I might have not made any sense with what I'm saying, but here are some sources that might help you in your inquiry". In a way, taking the material and going further is also acknowledging the limits of this community to understand and answer questions -- which is an important thing, I think.

You might think your question was a simple one. But that episode shows how it is not. Take "what is a bug?": most programmers (which are people you'd expect to know this) think they know what it is, but you'll probably get answers that refer to ambiguous or different things (hence, forerunners of the field coming up with more precise definitions using as terminology "error", "fault", "failure", etc).

For instance, you gave a definition for "The Observer", but one thing to ask is if that definition is precise enough to be clearly understood by your audience. For one thing, the definitions you gave are a couple of sentences long. As a contrast, the link I referred to in my answer points to a book entirely devoted to a single term: sati (tr. as "mindfulness").

Personally, upon seeing The Observer is the experience of being aware of myself, my first impulse is to reflect what 'experience', 'being aware', and 'myself' refer to?. One could read this and think I'm unable to understand common sense and ordinary english words: the problem again is that the formulation insufficiently precise to give a satisfying comparison. I did my best to fill the gaps and answer as I understood, as I did not want to sound like nitpicking in the comments. Again, I and others provided material.

A tangent here is that buddhist literature has a vocabulary that, often, is precise to a rare degree (and if we take abhidhamma in consideration, we get into formal ground). This has repercussions if one is trying to compare two systems of thought.

On another note, since you gave personal definitions, people felt they could tackle the question from what they understood. What you could have done from the beginning is better establish the field you are in (e.g. with a body of strong references) to avoid answers from people who have no prior knowledge. I for one, would never tackle a question that asks for a buddhist understanding of "identity" according to philosopher XYZ, if I'm not familiar with his/her works.

Finally, I think part of the burning out is the unending flow of comments. Engaging in them is optional -- and I think it's wise to chose not to when it's about back-and-forth discussions of concepts that won't get a satisfying explanation in such modality.

Answer 4

We have to come terms that even in Buddhism each lineage has different interpretation of key terminology sometime bending them to suite or justify a certain mode of pratice. Also pali is not easy to render into English in some cases. With these two issues when certain concepts are rendered into english the issue regarding terminology is further exacerbated. So it would be worldwide to be elaborate as possible on what you mean. If possible include the Pali terms within brackets if you know them.

Also many question in this site seems to be from novice. In such case do not assume what we might know the terms from your background on the site.

I see you have brought up the notion of an observer. This also many present in different ways based on the how someone would explain it. At the core of the rendering is trying to get right of the grasping to concept of person as such grasping give arise to unsatisfactoriness, e.g., someone external has done something not agreeable or you wishing to be of some other nature. One perhaps misunderstood rendering is there is no observer. More correct rendering is what you know about an observer is perception you generate in your mind (Satta Puggala Sanna) about the observer and not the actual observer. Also what you have is concepts about an observer our tendency is to take a static or entity view on the person but in reality is changing process conditions by Dependent Origination. Any mind generated view is a concept (pannatti) hence this is why the book dealing with concepts of the types of Persons (Puggala) is dealt with in the Abhidhamma is called Puggalapannatti. What is a Pannatti is not atomic as it constitutes by Citta, Chetisika and Rupa which are atomic. Buddhism has 2 truths which are atomic / indivisible / ultimate and non atomic / divisible / conventional or conceptual. Hence ultimately even in Buddhism concepts some further explanation and clarification may be merited to avoid miscommunication for people who might not exactly know Buddhist concepts so the site remains accessible to people who are new to Buddhism.

Answer 5

The crux of your issue is that there are many different schools of Buddhism.

They mostly parallel on about everything, some exceptions of course... but the underlying world view varies only subtly with most schools.

There are lineages of varying traditions, where idea A might be called two different things, or word B refers to multiple ideas differently across schools.

This is why it is recommended to take on a guru, a mentor and teacher already versed in the terms, and practicing their school and/or linage and studying it.

These things can be studied in books and texts, but it is easier to communicate ideas and address questions in person.