Interpretation of jāti (“birth”)

[Dogen]

@Brahmali

What a word means depends on the cultural context. In ancient India every instance of birth was also an instance of rebirth. We don’t get this unless we render jāti as rebirth. It is important we try to understand the world as much as we can through the lense of ancient Indian culture.

Bhante.

Respectfully, if that were the case, we wouldn’t have many instances of people questioning rebirth in the suttas. There’s even the wrong view of denying rebirth None of those things makes sense if people belived in rebirth without dispute.

So perhaps there’s an argument to be made for canon treating each birth as a rebirth. But to say that in Ancient India, every instance of birth was a rebirth might be stretching it out?

Even more pointedly, jati can refer to caste and such divisions - which was arguably a much more important context in ancient India - people cared about what division you were born into, more than who you might have been in a previous life. Such nuances are lost when the word is flattened to “rebirth”, IMO.