Different interpretations of jāti and maraṇa

Discussion
24

For me, no, because my reading of D.O. is it describes the 12 conditions that must ‘co-dependently-arise-together’ for the occurring of sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief & despair.

For example, I (the mind) experience sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief & despair due to the death of my mother or father. “Mother” & “father” is “a being” (“satta”) born from identification. This only occurs because I identify those aggregates as “my mother” & “my father”. When I see corpses on TV after an earthquake in Mongolia, I do not have sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief & despair because I have no identification with those lifeless aggregates on TV.

I think the reincarnation interpretation of D.O. cannot account for the very common experiences of sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief & despair, which are dependent on “death” or “loss”.

People grieve when their loved ones die or are lost. Or when they lose wealth or possessions (refer to SN 15.3). People do not grieve in a future life.

Anyway, I must work now. Some $$$ business has appeared on my computer screen.

…with birth as condition, ageing and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair come to be. Such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering. MN 38

He lives obsessed by the notions: ‘I am form, form is mine.’ As he lives obsessed by these notions, that form of his changes and alters. With the change and alteration of form, there arise in him sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair. SN 22.1

Lord, how could there not be an aberration in my faculties? My dear & beloved little son, my only child, has died. Because of his death, I have no desire to work or to eat. I keep going to the cemetery and crying out, ‘Where have you gone, my only little child? Where have you gone, my only little child?’ “That’s the way it is, householder. That’s the way it is — for sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are born from one who is dear, come springing from one who is dear.” MN 97

“Long have you (repeatedly) experienced the death of a mother. The tears you have shed over the death of a mother while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time—crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing—are greater than the water in the four great oceans. “Long have you (repeatedly) experienced the death of a father… the death of a brother… the death of a sister… the death of a son… the death of a daughter… loss with regard to relatives… loss with regard to wealth… loss with regard to disease. The tears you have shed over loss with regard to disease while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time—crying & weeping from being joined with what is displeasing, being separated from what is pleasing—are greater than the water in the four great oceans. SN 15.3

:seedling:

25

Hi , isn’t that just being
" indifferent " ,
It is After the " contact " where
feeling arises with either " happy " , " unhappy " , or " indifferent " .

If that is the case , an arahant
would be in the state of
" indifferent "
all the time , wouldn’t it be ?

Any arahant do not
remain holding to Indifferent ,
but , I suppose we do ,
only we are Not Aware of it !

Best wishes .

26

No. It is not being merely indifferent. I was referring to being indifferent because there is no personal attachment to those corpses (aggregates) in Mongolia.

Regards :seedling:

27

This is a direct translation of a sinhala article from another author:

People perceive sansära dukhā to be something experienced after death. However sansära dukhā is something experienced in the past, present, from now till death and then continued on to any other existence after that. Therefore one should experience sansära dukhā at infant, child, young and old ages equally. So how do one experience jāti dukhā , jarā dukhā and marana dukhā in all stages of life?

In-order to understand this, one must understand jāti dhamma, jarā dhamma and marana dhamma. Let’s look at how jāti dhamma, jarā dhamma and marana dhamma are explained in Ariyapariyesanā sutta MN26 :

Bhikkhus, what is jāti dhamma? wife and kids are jāti dhamma, servants are jāti dhamma, goats and sheeps are jāti dhamma, pigs and fowls are jāti dhamma, elephants, cattle, horses, and mares are jāti dhamma, gold and silver are jāti dhamma. These dhamma with qualities of five sense pleasures coming into existence is jāti dhamma. one who is tied to these things, infatuated with them, and utterly committed to them, being himself a jāti dhamma, seeks what it is also jāti dhamma…. Bhikkhus, what is jarā dhamma?wife and kids are jarā dhamma, servants are jarā dhamma, goats and sheeps are jarā dhamma, pigs and fowls are jarā dhamma, …. , being himself a jarā dhamma, seeks what is also jarā dhamma.

It goes on to explain byādhidhamma dhamma, maraṇa dhamma, soka dhamma, saṅki­lesa ­dhamma (dhamma that helps develop kilesa). Therefore jāti dhamma entails all living things one is acquainted with such as friends,family, dogs and cats. As well as all non-living things. So aren’t all these living and non-living jāti, not jāti dhamma?

If one is attached to any of these jāti dhamma that one comes into contact with, when they are perished or no longer available, one is left with sorrow. Let’s investigate how a 3-4 year old child would experience jāti dukhā . If you give a child a toy, the child would get attached to different features of this toy. Child would develop desire for the toy. Slowly when the toy starts to deteriorate and lose some of it’s functionality child would feel dukhā . In this way the child by association of the toy would go through jāti dukhā , jarā dukka and marana dukhā ( toy stops functioning). Similarly think of giving a new bicycle to a 15 year old teenager. If the bicycle breaks down or when it starts to deteriorate the teenager would feel sorrow. If a household pet get sick or die, wouldn’t everyone in that house attached to that pet feel jarā dukhā and marana dukhā? How much are we attached to our possessions (non-living jāti)? If any of these gets destroyed wouldn’t anyone attached to them feel dukhā?

Coming into contact with these living and non-living jāti, seeking them out and getting attached to them would give rise to jarā, maraṇa, soka­pari­deva,­ ­dukhā, do­manas­sa, upāyāsā. Therefore one should grasp that seeing jāti dukhā only in reference to the time of one’s birth is a very narrow view of jāti dukhā .

Original author : Dr R. G Weerasinghe

Full article: Unobserved suffering of sansära existence.pdf (240.5 KB)

With Metta
Oshan
(Translation was done as a meditation exercise in contemplating these ideas)

28

If we take jati to be the present manifestation of aggregates, then we can use the term life for it.

Right now and always in the present, death is the underlying inevitability of life, it manifests right now as an ever-present-possibility. As long as life/manifestation of the aggregates/jati is present, then so is the death-possibility present.
“With the presence of birth, ageing and death is present”;
" With the presence of this MY jati, MY ageing and MY possibility of death is present".
Seeing this presently arisen fact will help to undo the notion of ownership to MY life, because it is seen to be always and presently undermined and determined by elements or possibilities beyond my control i.e if that death-possibility-thing became an actuality, all other possibilities and actualities would end immediately. It shows that all of my life’s possibilities rest upon this inevitable-death-possibility. Seeing this dependently arisen nature, ones passion for life will drain away because no matter how meaningful one makes life, that personal meaning is always undermined by the actual meaning, that my life means my inevitable death.
It also means that my life is not my own because it is determined by that death-possibility-thing, being present first.
I cannot remove that underlying determination of my life.

There is a thought “I will die”, it is usually abstract and pertaining to the future inevitability of ending of life, and it is not enough to be unaffected by lives ups and downs. In other words, it makes no difference to me, I still feel that life is first, life takes priority and death is something that happens later on. But seeing that death-possibility-thing is present always simultaneously(D.O) with life reveals the secondary importance of life and the priority of the dependent origination principle.

For a puthujjana, there will not be DEATH as THE END, but only my-death of a particular arrangement of experience/ five-assumed-aggregates. Therefore the puthujjana actually has no freedom from the *change of circumstance possibility(death) *, he is bound with change and cannot create the changeless. He cannot experience ultimate ENDING but only the change of circumstance, however much he wants to access death or control it or own it, it is forever out of reach. One could set things in motion for a future change of circumstance/death, but how that change manifests is also beyond ones reach because it is an underlying determination for ones so-called controlled life I.e it is the bases upon which my control manifests, that base is a thing which is not mine, I cannot create the possibility of death because it is given with life.

All I can know without a doubt is that the possibility of this life stopping is possible at any point. The possibility of a circumstantial change of life is always possible, it could manifest on any occasion, completely indifferent to the current circumstance. The ageing of this current life is indifferent to the desire for it not to age or to age, and the manifestation of life is completely indifferent to one’s desire for it not to manifest or to manifest.

Whether one has desires towards life or death, makes no difference to life or death, but thinking that it makes a difference, one is then subjecting oneself to life and death I.e creating a relationship with that which is indifferent to your needs of ownership. Which means that as long as life manifests one will be subject to its change being out of sync with ones assumed ownership views, one will be subjecting oneself to the suffering of a self-created discrepancy.
By generating or fuelling the assumption of life and death being one’s own, one goes along for the ride, which is the inevitable loop of life, decay and change.

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29

In DO jati arises in dependence upon bhava, so it might be worth examining the meaning of bhava. In DO birth, old age and death are described in physical/biological terms, which suggests that bhava also has a physical/biological dimension. In SN 12.2 bhava is described as existence or becoming in the 3 realms, which sounds cyclical, particularly when combined with the 3 knowledges and EBT descriptions of kamma, ie beings reappearing in different realms according to their actions. On the other hand I don’t think that old age and death are dukkha for an Arahant, given the cessation of craving, aversion and identification. If you’re not attached to the aggregates as “me and mine” then presumably decline and cessation is not a cause for dukkha. By the way, I don’t see any support in the EBT for the idea of “moment-to-moment rebirth”, and I see it as fudging the issue.

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