CLINGING

"There is only the [person] of the Way, listening to my discourse, dependent upon nothing ...who is the mother of all buddhas.  Therefore buddhas are born from no-dependence.  Awaken to non-dependence, and there is no buddha to be obtained, either.  Insight such as this is true insight. " (Rinzai)

"Clinging,” is another word for dependence, or object fixation.  Who fixates an object?  It is, of course, the “self” that asserts “I am here”  and “it is there.”  In that sense,  “object-fixation” is also “self-fixation.”   No clinging, or non-dependence, is also the experience of self-less engagement. 

As I see it, that non-dependence, that self-less engagement, is something perfectly ordinary.  Like the sunrise.  Like the first bird song of morning.  Like “throwing yourself” into a piece of music, or a work of art.  Like eating  without distraction, with  “fullness of mind,”

We are talking about  experience.  When the conscious experience of ‘self-as-object’ has disappeared, then the “other-as-object” has also disappeared. 

And so  clinging has these two dimensions, self and other.  We cling to notions of self-identity and object identity.  The fullness of experience, what is realized in moments of complete engagement, is the falling away of  distinction between self and other. 

But Zen tradition points out that there is a third aspect of such moments, another condition besides “self” and “object,”  All objects of perception arise relative to something held in contrast; what  Buddhism calls “dependent origination.” 

The perception of day is made possible by the background experience of night.  The awareness of inbreath is made possible by awareness of outbreath.  The perception of a sound is made possible in contrast to silence.  “Sound,”  is the condition, the “object” of attention, but silence is the “cause;” or  “subject,”  in relation to that  “object.”

Buddhism points out that the complete situation is unity, no separation at all, beyond  preferences.  The separation of subject and object, whatever its utility to us, is an incomplete situation.  

Such insight is “skillful,” is “wisdom.” Because to fixate incompleteness, leads to discontent, to suffering.  As in the story of the garden of Eden, the tree of knowledge offers a gift, but a gift that comes at a price, the price of suffering.  When we explore that suffering, we encounter attachment (clinging)  to a self-centered conception of the world, a point of view that ultimately must reckon the dynamic interrelatedness of all things.

Zen tradition describes the situation like this:  when subject and object separate, they give up a tiny bit of themselves, creating space between them.  Those tiny bits, those “preferences” we experience as “self.”  Consequently the “self” is born from separation and looks upon subject and object that are incomplete.

Incomplete,  because whole picture is subject, object and self.  Or, as it is said, one wholeness becomes divided into three.  One wholeness becomes divided by consciousness into subject, object and self. 

But also, three becomes one.  In order for the truth of wholeness to be experienced, the self must disappear, must give back to subject and object that tiny bit of themselves.

Fixation on “object” in distinction to “subject,”  fixation on self in distinction to other, is what Buddhism calls “clinging.”  Inherent in that clinging is one wholeness, wholeness present but hidden to the clinging self.  And so clinging is also called “ignorance.” 

Clinging is inevitably abandoned. Impermanence happens.  Ultimately, self is emptiness,  experienced as “true,”  experienced as “love” in which we are thrown “completely into life and death, good and evil, beauty and ugliness.”   Self-serving action, no matter how powerful, must finally bend to the truth of selflessness.

As long as we live, we will have our individuality.  But not to “cling,”  not to get stuck there, to be mindful of impermanence, mindful of unity,  is that “wisdom”  honored as the ground from which truth and skillful action becomes possible.