Clinging and Desire

The Distinction Between Clinging and Desire

"At a... conference in New York City... some-one asked the writer and Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor about this issue:
"I have no trouble understanding the idea of non-attachment in meditation,” the questioner said, “but when it comes to my marriage and family, I don’t get it. Why is non-attachment even a positive thing to aspire to?” Attachment, even desire, seemed to the questioner like something to be supported in the inter-personal realm, not something to be overcome.

Stephen motioned to his wife, Martine, who was just coming into the room. “My wife says it is like holding a coin,” he said, and he held out one arm with his palm up and his fist closed. “We can hold it like this,” and he emphasized the closed nature of his fist, “or we can hold it like this,” and he opened his hand to show the coin sitting in the center of his palm. “The closed fist is like clinging,” he said. “But with my hand open, I still hold the coin.” Buddhism, Stephen seemed to be implying actually imagines that desire can be held lightly. The distinction between the closed and the open fist is the distinction between clinging and desire."

- quoted from Mark Epstein's "Open to Desire"



Four Noble Truths

The Buddha's Four Noble Truths are:

1. Life is Duḥkha (suffering/unsatisfactoriness)
2. Duḥkha (Suffering/Unsatisfactoriness) is caused by Tṛṣṇā (thirst/clinging [to conditioned things])
3. The Cessation of Tṛṣṇā leads to the cessation of Duḥkha, and this Cessation is known as Nirvāṇa (extinction, as in a candle flame)
4. There is a Marga (path) that leads to this Cessation

Epstein's rendering of the term Tṛṣṇā requires a differentiation that we do not typically make: which is the distinction between Clinging and Desire.

Desire itself is not the problem, which is the argument Epstein makes in his book, and which I agree with. It is when desire itself cannot be lightly held, when it turns into a grasping, a clinging, that problems arise.


Instead of a Coin, A Butterfly

If it were, say, a butterfly instead of a coin in Bachelor's metaphor, any literal grasping would also be a literal death of the very object which we were attempting to possess. The butterfly is killed by our clinging.

On the other hand, to have open palms signifies both our capacity to receive, and is also itself an act of giving (of space, of freedom, of 'allowing'). It is in this open palmed version of beholding and apprehension, that the butterfly is not killed; it is free to come and to go, and we become but the temporary beholders and beneficiaries of its beauty, with nothing destroyed.

This is, to me, the basic building block of spiritual growth. We first apprehend our motivations, and our ambitions. This act of apprehension is itself the cultivation of the union of both wisdom and compassion. Simple as it is, it is a radical departure from the severe world-denying and beauty-shunning asceticism that characterises much of false and/or institutionalised spirituality...

Of course, it is understandable why this falsity exists in the first place.

After all, the act of apprehension itself is difficult. Far easier to have closed palms in the first place, than to have beauty settle upon then but to then be refused the opportunity to hold onto it. One cannot grasp the sublime, and so any beauty that can settle upon our own impermanent lives is tinged with sadness.

However, I believe that this is easily remedied.


Right Understanding

To take the analogy of the coin one step further: Many of us are afraid. Given our circumstances and our conditioning, perhaps we are even correct in assuming that if we opened our palms, all we have cultivated or earned would vanish from us, as in what would happen if we had our hands clasped tight with our palms faced down.

However, I believe that with Right Understanding, by 'holding' our desire correctly, palms faced up, with proper understanding of the distinction between craving/clinging and desire itself, it is like unclasping our hands, and noting with sure relief that the coin does not fall...