Bhante what do you think about this?
The Buddha, on the other hand, talks about the nature of birth, as a phenomena (dhamma), in one’s experience. He does not refer to birth as an occurrence in time, upon which even puthujjanascannot agree, and this can be seen from the usual paṭiccasamuppāda (p.s.) description. In this description, jāti refers to that ‘nature’ of birth and any temporal events are completely irrelevant to it. If there is no ‘birth’ whatsoever, if there is no manifestation (as such) of the aggregates, a puthujjana would not be able to regard any event (in this case ‘coming-out-of-womb’) as *his7*birth8. Thus, one doesn’t suffer on account of birth as an event in the past, one suffers on account of the nature of birth in the present. In p.s. context, ‘birth’ structurally precedes ‘ageing-and-death’. ‘Ageing-and-death’ is not ‘birth’, but they wouldn’t be without it – together they arise, together they cease. So, it is that with ‘birth’, ‘ageing-and-death’ (and ‘sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair’) apply. Consequently, if we were to discuss jāramaraṇaṃ, we could say that it is because ageing-and-death is present, that one will age and die (and suffer) in time. But, if one could manage, through an understanding of the Dhamma, to free oneself from ‘being’ – to bring it to an end – ‘ birth’ and ‘ageing-and-death’ would cease to exist for him: all of the temporal occasions for suffering would cease to be his suffering, since by not-being born, one doesn’t have the desire to interfere with them any more – one is free.
We need look no further than the p.s. description in order to see what the Buddha meant by ‘birth’. In Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta, M. 9/i 50, it is said, as we already referred to it earlier on: When a noble disciple has thus understood birth, the origin of birth, the cessation of birth, and the way leading to the cessation of birth… he here and now makes an end of suffering. In that way too a noble disciple is one of right view… and has arrived at this true Dhamma.
Thus, a Noble disciple, an ariyasāvaka, can by understanding ‘birth’, in the same sense that he would have understood the Four Noble Truths – directly and timelessly – free oneself and become an arahat. So, one may rightly ask now: would this be possible, if ‘birth’ were not already somehow present, as a phenomena, in our experience? How would one be able to understand birth directly and without involving time? If one’s birth was indeed a distant event, in some maternity ward perhaps, one’s fate would be sealed according to the Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta, since the event of birth has already passed and cannot possibly be understood directly. Fortunately, one’s birth is not in the past, so one can, if one chooses to follow the Buddha’s Teaching, cease to, in the present, regard ‘birth’ as his and by doing so remove himself from the domain of ageing-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. One can escape.
Bhikkhu Ninoslav Ñāṇamoli
