How has birth been taken in the sense of’ Does one suffer when a baby is born to the family?’ etc. and the suffering taken in regard to those not experiencing birth? The sutta just says ‘birth’, the event, the occurrence of birth,i,e. in relation to, or from the standpoint of, those who experience it.
For, by the same reasoning(that suffering is also happiness for the enemies of those experiencing suffering, and the other way round), every quality will have its opposite included in its definition, and a quality and its opposite will in fact become interchangeable:
Famine is suffering. Can famine then be said to be also happiness just because across the border a rival people are happy that famine is reducing the population of their enemy? Clearly, by ‘famine is suffering’ is meant famine is suffering to those who experience it. Likewise, birth is suffering to those who experience it.
True, birth in NOT suffering to the other members of that family, and famine or epidemics or wholesale extinction is NOT suffering to a rival people or tribe across the border. But why has this implication of the opposite quality existing AWAY from the experiencer(s) been brought in? And ‘birth’ of something liked etc . . . . ‘birth’ in the sense of something coming to be?
…We may not remember, but birth is a traumatic event, just like the dying moment. Coming out of the birth canal is a traumatic event for both the mother and the baby.- Birth is suffering.
metta to all