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The Things We Cling To - Handbook for Mankind Buddhadasa Bhikkha

THE THINGS WE CLING TO

What are we clinging to? What is our handhold? What we are clinging to is the world itself. In Buddhism the word "world" has a broader connotation than it has in ordinary usage. It refers to all things, to the totality. It does not refer just to human beings, or celestial beings, or gods, or beasts, or the denizens of hell, or demons, or hungry ghosts, or titans, or any particular realm of existence at all. What the word "world" refers to here is the whole lot taken together. To know the world is difficult because certain levels of the world are concealed. Most of us are familiar with only the outermost layer or level, the level of relative truth, the level corresponding to the intellect of the average man. For this reason Buddhism teaches us about the world at various levels.

The Buddha had a method of instruction based on a division of the world into a material or physical aspect and non-material or mental aspect. He further divided up the mental world or mind into four parts. Counting the physical and the mental together makes a total of five components, called by the Buddha the Five Aggregates, which together go to make up the world, in particular living creatures and man himself. In looking at the world we shall concentrate on the world of living creatures, in particular man, because it is man that happens to be the problem. In man these five components are all present together: his physical body is the material aggregate; his mental aspect is divisible into four aggregates, which we shall now describe.

The first of the mental aggregates is feeling (vedana), which is of three kinds, namely pleasure or gratification, displeasure or suffering, and a neutral kind, which is neither pleasure nor displeasure, but which is a kind of feeling nevertheless. Under normal conditions feelings are always present in us. Every day we are filled with feelings. The Buddha, then, pointed out feeling as one of the components which together go to make up the man.

The second component of mind is perception (sanna). This is the process of becoming aware, similar to waking up as opposed to being sound asleep or unconscious, or dead. It refers to memory as well as awareness of sense impressions, covering both the primary sensation resulting from contact with an object by way of eye, ear, nose, tongue, or body, and the recall of previous impressions. Thus one may be directly aware of an object as black or white, long or short, man or beast, and so on, or one may be similarly aware in retrospect by way of memory.

The third mental aggregate is the actively thinking component (sankhara) in an individual-thinking of doing some thing, thinking of saying something, good thought and bad thought, willed thinking, active thinking-this is the third mental aggregate.

The fourth component of mind is consciousness (vinnana). It is the function of knowing the objects perceived by way of eye, ear, nose, tongue and the general body sense, and also by way of the mind itself.

These five aggregates constitute the site of the four kinds of clinging explained in the fourth chapter. Turn back and read it again, and think it over so that you understand it properly. You will then realize that it is these five aggregates that are the object and handhold for our grasping and clinging. A person may grasp at any one of these groups as being a self according to the extent of his ignorance. For instance, a boy who carelessly bumps into a door and hurts himself feels he has to give the door a kick in order to relieve his anger and pain. In other words, he is grasping at a purely material object, namely the door, which is nothing but wood, as being a self. This is attachment at the lowest level of all. A man who be comes angry with his body to the point of striking it or hitting himself on the head is grasping and clinging in the same way. He is taking those body parts to be selves. If he is rather more intelligent than that, he may seize on feeling, or perception or active thinking, or consciousness, at any one of these groups as being a self. If he is unable to distinguish them individually, he may grasp at the whole lot collectively as being a self, that is, take all five groups together to be "his self."

After the physical body, the group next most likely to be clung to as being a self is feeling pleasurable, painful, or neutral. Let us consider the situation in which we find ourselves, entranced with sensual pleasures, in particular delectable sensations, caught up heart and soul in the various colors and shapes, sound, scents, tastes and tactile objects that we perceive. Here feeling is the pleasure and delight experienced, and it is to that very feeling of pleasure and delight that we cling. Almost everyone clings to feeling as being a self, because there is no one who does not like delightful sensations, especially tactile sensations by way of the skin. Ignorance or delusion blinds a person to all else. He sees only the delightful object and grasps at it as being a self; he regards that object as "mine." Feeling, whether of pleasure or displeasure, is truly a site of suffering. Spiritually speaking, these feelings of pleasure and displeasure may be considered as synonymous with suffering, because they give rise to nothing but mental torment. Pleasure renders the mind buoyant; displeasure deflates it. Gain and loss, happiness and sorrow, amount in effect to mental restlessness or instability; they set the mind spinning. This is what is meant by grasping at feeling as being a self. We should all do well to have a closer look at this process of grasping at feeling as being a self, as being "ours," and try to gain a proper understanding of it. Understanding feeling as an object of clinging, the mind will be rendered independently of it. Feeling normally has control over the mind, luring us into situations that we regret later on. In his practical path to perfection or arahantship, the Buddha teaches us repeatedly to give particular attention to the examination of feeling. Many have become arahants and broken free from suffering by means of restricting feeling to simply an object of study.

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