Thanks for your feedback! I’ve been toddling along with this for a while, and you helped get it in a hopefully less embarrassingly bad form.
Right, that’s really the nub of the matter.
Actually a remark by Brahmali in our discussions really helped. He noted that while nibbana used by itself means extinguishment, in context it often implies the extinguishment of suffering. A seemingly obvious point, but it really clarifies contexts like “nibbana here and now”, or how eternalists can adopt the term.
Hang on, what? Charles’ translation of MA 6 says:
A monk’s practice ought to be thus: ‘I have no self, and nothing is mine. In the future, there’ll be no self, and nothing will be mine.’
Which is parallel to the Pali:
no cassa no ca me siyā, na bhavissati na me bhavissati
Dunno, maybe a translation issue in the Chinese?
As for MA 62 (Bingenheimer/Bucknell/Analayo):
However, there is no self; there is nothing that belongs to a self; [all this] is empty of a self and empty of anything that belongs to a self.
It’s close to things like suññamidaṁ attena vā attaniyena vā.
Interesting anyway. Not sure to what extent these can be chalked up to translation or redaction issues. MA 62 seems like a somewhat lateish text, as it expands on the Mahakkhandhaka narrative and has no parallels. Still, you’re right, as they stand these seem to straightforwardly assert that there is no self.
It’s a good warning to not hinge important points on brittle arguments from absence.
Well, what do you mean by “metaphysical”? Without a clear understanding we end up just talking past each other. Which is why, unlike Thanissaro, I explained what I meant by the term.
Whether a statement is metaphysical has nothing to do with the degree of confidence that one has in it. I’m extremely confident that today is Friday. I’m also extremely confident that neither God nor a Self exist.
I am not relying on a book, but on talks he gave in Thai. But it was a long time ago and I couldn’t find the details now, so feel free to ignore it if you like!