You're too "clingy" (cartoon)

Dhr. Seven, Crystal Quintero, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Nyanatiloka

I don't know what I'm doing wrong in relationship after relationship, searching for...

(Family Guy/Hulu) As clingy as a baby at the bosom is Stewie as Brian tries to cling to Drew

Starts off fun, gets to be too much.

Crystal, is clinging a problem in life? It is in Ashley's life; she has been known to get quite clingy. Ask her. But you? Not me so much, but guys I've dated. What do they do? You know how Brian once went on that reality dating show as a contestant then became infatuated with the bachelorette? Yes, exactly, I get it. He would leave all these phone messages and not get the hint to naff off. 

Brian the clingy bachelor (Family Guy)

"Clinging" (upādāna), according to the Path of Purification (Vis.M. XVII), is a pathetic and intensified degree of craving. The opposite is the "extinction of craving," which is identical with the "extinction of defilements" (āsavakkhaya), which is the attainment of full enlightenment or arhatship. (See noble persons).

There are four kinds of clinging that prevent enlightenment:

1. sensual clinging (kāma-upādāna),
2. clinging to views (ditthi-upādāna),
3. clinging to mere rules and rituals (sīlabbata-upādāna),
4. clinging to personality-belief (atta-vāda-upādāna).

(1) "What now is sensual clinging? Whatever with regard to sense objects there exists of sensual lust, sensual craving, sensual attachment, sensual passion, sensual delusion, sensual fetters (bonds of desire): this is called 'sensual clinging.'

Owner of a lonely heart? Try clinging to sensuality. It will disappoint, but what else are you going to do to overcome the empty feeling in your core and the body's cravings? Invest?

 
(2) ''What is the clinging to views? 'Alms and offerings are useless; there is no fruit or result for good and bad deeds: all such views and wrong opinions are called the clinging to views.

(3) "What is the clinging to mere rules and rituals? The holding firmly to the view that through mere rules (vows, precepts, discipline) and rituals (observances) one may reach enlightenment: this is called the clinging to mere rules and rituals.

• [NOTE: the way to enlightenment and nirvana is liberating-insight, made possible by the Noble Eightfold Path, not mere observance of ceremonies, celebrations, superstitions, magic, abstinences, or austerities, which may aid one along the way but cannot possibly in and of themselves bring about enlightenment.]

(4) "What is the clinging to personality-belief? The 20 kinds of ego-views with regard to the aggregates of existence (see sakkāya-ditthi): these are called the clinging to personality-belief" (Dhs.1214-17).

Not going to get all clingy, are you? - I'm not even going to call you tomorrow. - Good.

.

Heart Sutra: immaculate heart free of clinging

This traditional fourfold division of clinging is unsatisfactory. Besides sensual (kama) clinging we would expect either clinging to form or materiality (rūpa) and clinging to formlessness or immateriality (arūpa), or simply clinging to continued existence (continued becoming, bhava-upādāna).

Although the non-returner, the third of the four stages of enlightenment, is entirely free from the traditional four kinds of clinging, that person is not yet free of rebirth, as one still possesses clinging to continued becoming, the deep desire for rebirth on other planes even though one grasps that they are illusory, marked by Three Characteristics of Existence, namely, that they are impersonal, impermanent, and never able to satisfy one's desires.

The Commentary to the Path of Purification (Vis.M. XVII), in trying to get out of this dilemma, explains "sense clinging" as including here all of the remaining kinds of clinging.

"Clinging" is the common rendering for the Pali/Sanskrit term upādāna, but "grasping" would come closer to the literal meaning of it, which is "uptake" after craving it. See the Three Cardinal Discourses (Wheel No. 17), p.19.

"Family Guy" the Very First Episode

(Workard) Life in modern suburban USA as brought to us by Seth Macfarlane and the many writers of and contributors to "Family Guy." This is the pilot or unofficial first episode, the prequel. The "official" first episode was a remake of it.

The world, the world! (sutra)

Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; F.L. Woodward (trans.), Kindred Sayings, The Chapter on Channa and Others (Samyutta Nikaya, IV, Pali Text Society)

Saving the world, protesting economic and social injustices, Occupy L.A. (Wisdom Quarterly)

  

(84) Ven. Ananda came to see the Exalted One [Buddha]...and asked:

"'The world! The world!' it is said. venerable sir, please explain, how far does this saying go?"

"Ananda, what is transitory (paloka-dhamma = bhijjanaka, worldly phenomena, impermanent) by nature is called 'the world' in this noble doctrine and discipline [Arya-Dhamma-Vinaya].

 

"And what, Ananda, is transitory by nature? The eye, Ananda, is transitory by nature...visible objects... [The same is said for all six senses including the] mind is transitory by nature, mind-states, mind-consciousness, mind-contact [contact = the coming together of sense base, sense object, AND consciousness], whatever pleasure or pain (weal or woe) or neutral state experienced arises owing to mind-contact -- that, too, is transitory by nature. 

"Ananda, what is transitory by nature is called 'the world' in this noble doctrine and discipline."

Empty (void)

(85) Then Ven. Ananda...said to the Exalted One: "'The world IS empty! The world is empty!' it is said. Venerable sir, how far does this saying go?"

"Ananda, because the world is devoid of a self or anything belonging to a self (atta-niya, a self's property or possessions), therefore it is said, 'The world is empty.' And what, Ananda, is devoid of a self or what belongs to a self?

"Eye, visible objects, eye-consciousness... mind, mind-objects, mind consciousness are devoid of a self. Ananda, that is why it is said, 'The world is empty!'"

In Brief

Massive, sitting, golden Shakyamuni Buddha statue, Thailand (WQ)

 

(86) ...Then Ven. Ananda said to the Exalted One: "Well, for me, venerable sir, if the Exalted One would teach me a teaching in brief, a teaching which on hearing from the Exalted One I might dwell solitary, remote, earnest, ardent, and aspiring."

 

"Now what do you think, Ananda? Is the eye permanent or impermanent?" -- "Impermanent, venerable sir."

"What is impermanent, is that pleasant or painful (weal or woe)?" "Painful, venerable sir."

"Now what is impermanent, painful (woeful, disappointing), changeable by nature, is it fitting to regard that as, 'This is mine. This I am. This is my self'?" -- "Surely not, venerable sir."

 

"Eye, visible objects, eye-consciousness, eye-contact -- is that permanent or impermanent?" [This same is said of all six senses, types of sense objects, consciousness, and contact between the three].

"Then of what is impermanent, disappointing, and changeable by nature, is it fitting to regard that as, 'This is mine. This I am. This is my self'?" -- "Surely not, venerable sir."

"So seeing, Ananda, the well-taught noble disciple... [is] freed of conceits; one grasps at nothing in the world [does not cling to anything in the world or anything regarding an illusory ego]. Being free from grasping, one is not troubled. Being untroubled, one is by oneself set free. Thus one realizes, 'Rebirth is destroyed, lived is the highest life, done is the task. There is no more of this [suffering] to come.'

 

"This, Ananda, is the proper approach to the uprooting of all conceits [delusions]."

 

The Heart of Wisdom Sutra

(COMMENTARY)

The later Mahayana tradition says all of this much more cryptically in the "Perfection of Wisdom" literature (Prajna Paramita), epitomized in the Heart Sutra.

 

There the Five Aggregates of Clinging are laid bare: form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness are empty. 

 

That is, they are devoid of a "self" through and through. Illusion exists. These constituents of being/becoming are generally regarded as a "self" by untaught, ordinary worldlings.

 

But because they are impermanent and unsatisfactory (disappointing), it is incorrect to regard them as personal. They are impersonal (not-self), beyond our control, brought into transient or momentary existence by causes and conditions. They do not arise by themselves but are brought into being by causes and conditions, which is to say they are dependently originated or arisen. 

 

All of this happens again and again based on ignorance. When liberating-insight arises, enlightenment dawns, and all suffering is brought to an end.

Of Mindsets and Monkeypots

Petr Karel Ontl, "Of Mindsets and Monkeypots" (BPS/ATI); Dhr. Seven (ed.) Wisdom Quarterly

I'm going ape over your dancing, baby. Dance, baby, dance! (rawstory.com)

  

Monkey King

In rural India, I am told, there are people who earn extra money by trapping and taming monkeys to be sold into slavery as pets.

 

Over the years, through trial and error, several ways have been devised to capture these clever but greedy/grasping primates. But the simplest method is said to be THE MONKEYPOT. 

Hey, monkey, it's a trap. Just let go! (redxb9)

In a clearing, the trapper fastens a short piece of cord or chain to a stake or tree-stump. To the other end is attached a small pot with a narrow neck. Into this pot are dropped several nuts, fruit, or a clump of precious salt, and a few more are scattered on the ground. The trapper then hides out of sight.

 

Soon a band of monkeys arrives and descends to feed. Before long, one of them discovers the contents of the pot. It puts its hand in the pot easily enough. But having grasped the enticing treat, it cannot pull its clenched fist out through the narrow opening no matter how hard it struggles. 

[Why? Its narrowed hand can go in the neck, but its full hand is too big to pull out -- and, due to its grasping nature, it never thinks to let go.]

Lust is the strongest manifestation of SENSUAL CRAVING, tanha and lobha or thirst and greed, just as VIEWS are the mind's obsession (Williams/laluzdejesus.com).

 

It panics in fear and the trapped monkey creates a ruckus, which brings the trapper running with net and cage or skewer. The monkey's fate, for all its cleverness, is sealed.

 

At first glance it would appear that the villager is the trapper, the baited pot his trap, and the poor monkey his victim. No doubt the villager sees things this way. The hapless simian, were it able to speak, would probably agree. 

However, a closer look shows a different perspective. The villager is NOT the trapper, nor the pot the trap, because there is nothing holding the monkey:

It could very easily remove its hand from the pot and rejoin the free monkey in the treetops if only it would let go of the nuts, the fruit, the salt. If it would only let go!

  

Monkeys only? 

I just want more and more love and...

The monkey in this anecdote does not suspect that it is being held prisoner solely by its mind. It has found some treat. 

Greed -- unreasonable and unreasoning desire -- has arisen. Though the jungle abounds with nuts and fruits and salt and all kinds of foods, the monkey's conditioned reaction dictates that it must have these as well.
 

Its narrow mindset is the only thing that imprisons it, that prevents it from letting go, from seeing the absurdity of this predicament, this enslavement, this "trap" -- or the obvious way out of it.

 

Now, before anyone makes any smug comments about the monkey and its intelligence, or the apparent lack thereof, and before we congratulate ourselves on our vastly superior reasoning powers, let us see where we ourselves stand.

 

This business of letting go is so easy, yet so hard, for monkey and for human alike. We are both caught up in the same predicament. The details may differ, played out on higher levels of sophistication or complexity [and higher ones where celestial beings are caught up in more alluring space worlds], but the end result is the same: enslavement by concepts and conditioning. 

While the monkey is done in by its greed for a few nuts, we humans are done in by our greed for wealth, fame, power, status, pleasure, and shiny trinkets and toys which we believe we absolutely must have and cannot live without. 

You're still not getting it! I want what I want when I want it, and I expect you to know what that is without me having to explain it every single time. I don't think that's too hard!

 

Even more fundamentally, we become enslaved by our attitudes and feelings toward them.

 

We endlessly seek gratification for the senses: pleasant things to look at, to listen to, to touch, to taste, to smell. Moreover, we are spurred on by thoughts or concepts created by our ego-driven minds. 

These last can be the hardest to satisfy since we cannot just please our senses and be content. Rather, we strive to fulfill fantasies of outdoing our peers, of turning them green with envy by having the biggest, the costliest, the latest, the shiniest. We are caught up in competition, in a game of one-up-manship. 

 

It cannot even be said that we are materialistic: We don't know how to be! We do not genuinely enjoy and appreciate the material things we have, much less life itself. We don't even know how to relax. More

• Petr Karel Ontl was born into a Bohemian-American family in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1942 and emigrated to the USA in 1949. He has been a Theravada Buddhist for the past 20 years affiliated with Bhavana Society, West Virginia, USA.

Lust, desire, and craving (video)

Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Wikipedia edit raga

"Greed" lust as lobha in "Mondo Amore" (Williams/laluzdejesus.com)

  

Craving?

Young Buddhist Lisa Simpson fails to comprehend wanting stuff. While craving (tanha) is a source of disappointment (dukkha), it is typical of living beings, particularly beings like us living in a Sense Sphere (kama loka) world. Not ALL wanting is unskillful. The wish or desire, for example, for enlightenment (bodhi), complete-liberation (nirvana), wisdom (paññā), or compassion (karuna) is wholesome. Such a wish leads one to strive and eventually find them, even if one must let go even of that beneficial-wish rather than grasping at it to actually attain it. Letting go too soon is a big mistake. In the Parable of the Raft, one fashions a floating device for "crossing over" from enslavement to freedom. The time to let go is once meditation is something one looks forward to and the goal is at hand. Until then, keep doing it until you want to.

 

GREED (Pali lobha or raga, Tibetan 'dod chags) is usually translated as "attachment," "passion," "lust," or "desire." But this is far too kind. It actually refers to craving, clinging, grasping, or hankering.

It is craving things within the three spheres of existence, which produces immediate frustration and eventual disappointment.

 

We crave for what is lasting, pleasurable, and personal in worlds that are radically impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal

Indian words have a broad range of meaning, and this is true of lobha, which runs the gamut from bias or preference to agonizing lust and hoarding behavior. It is easy to see how hoarding and being unable to let go is harmful, but it is almost impossible for an ordinary person to perceive how the very arising of a preference sets one up for disappointment and dissatisfaction.*

 

Greed is identified as a factor in the following contexts:

• The Three Poisons in Mahayana
• The Three Unwholesome Roots in Theravada
• The six root defilements in Mahayana Abhidharma
• The 14 unwholesome mental factors in Theravada Abhidharma. 

I lust you. - I love you.

The Theravada commentarial text the Path of Purification (XIV, 162), which is analogous to the Path of Freedom preserved by Mahayana sources (although likely simply an early draft by the very same author), gives the following definition of "greed" (lobha):

 

...[G]reed has the characteristic of grasping an object like a monkey trap [a device where a monkey sticks its hand in a hole to get salt but can't get it out because of its grasped fist, which it never thinks to let go of even as it is captured by approaching hunters]. Its function is sticking, like flesh put on a hot grill. It is manifested as not letting go, like the dye of lamp-soot. Its proximate cause is seeing enjoyment [but not danger] in things that lead to bondage. Swelling with the current of craving, it should be regarded as sweeping (beings) with it to states of loss, just as a swift-flowing river sweeps to the great ocean.

Lust, lust, lust

I'm just saying, Tone it down. I was once young, too. - Mom, shaddup. You don't even know!!!

  

"Why is lust talked about so much in religion? We have to have desire to survive." It is not that lust is the only problem we face on the road to freedom and happiness. Most of us think lust is happiness, or a desperate emptiness that gives us something to fill, which feels good doing.

The Buddha talked a great deal about sensuality, and sex is promoted to the rank of poster child for the class of sense pleasures. But "greed" includes them all. What is usually translated as sexual misconduct (kamesu micchacara) actually, more broadly, refers to kāma or sensual misconduct.

 

Go on, take it; it makes me feel like a man. - OMG, my mom warned me about this!!!

 

What is sensual in this sense? Everything related to the five senses is sensual as is abuse of the sixth sense thinking about again and again enjoying the other five: (1) sights, (2) sounds, (3) tactile sensations [sex would be mostly here but can, of course, encompass all of the senses], (4) tastes, (5) fragrances, and (6) thoughts (or mind/heart as a sense that perceives or stands in for the other senses or takes in its own unique objects not accessible to the other five).

• Most people think we only have five senses, but we have far more than that. The Buddha talked about six, but that is not a limit, just a handy convention. This is true of other numbers in Buddhism: If one looks carefully, the Five Aggregates of Clinging are not limited to five; those five groupings are pedagogical and can be extended to as many groupings or heaps as one wishes to define. More heaps will not change the fact that there is no being behind them experiencing the process; there is only the process. What are our other senses? According to Vsauce they include, proprioception or kinesthesia, balance, acceleration, temperature, pain reception, time lapse, pulmonary stretch, peripheral chemo reception, distension, esophageal reception, pharynx mucosal reception... If we were, or become, sea mammals we'll gain echolocation (which some humans already enjoy), thermal reception and/or broadened light reception to see in the dark, and so on, and if and when we become devas we will gain refined senses and psychic faculties, and so on, which some people and hybrids (like some Chinese children) already possess. What do chimeras possess?

What is "sexual misconduct" anyway?

As ordinary living beings, even as good Buddhists, we will enjoy and delight in the world (whether it be this one or the many superior worlds above it). In moderation and harming no one, this is fine. Lisa, it's okay! In the Sigalovada Sutra ("Advice to Householders," DN 31) the Buddha advises young Sigala the householder to make use of money earned by partitioning it into four parts: one to enjoy, one to pay expenses, one to restock shelves/promote one's livelihood, and one to save for times of need. This is enlightened self-interest: Enjoy now, and make sure there is something to enjoy in the future.

But in ultimate terms, this will never do. When one wishes to transcend the world (cyclical wandering through birth, death, rebirth, redeath, misery unutterable, and the uncountable lives already lived in worlds of staggering diversity, one must overcome bondage. One must break free of ALL "suffering" (disappointment, dissatisfaction, woe, ill, misery, tragedy, lack of fulfillment, loss, crying, pain, unhappiness...). That means putting away the toys for a minute, so to speak. One cannot attain enlightenment in the thick of one's mental defilements, defilements of the heart (broadly speaking, one's greed, hate/fear, delusion in their various manifestations).

 

The Buddha taught us to see what he saw.

One can, however, enjoy sensual pleasures after stream entry, the first stage of enlightenment. Having uprooted the main bonds and weakened others ensures that one will reach full enlightenment and final nirvana within seven lives. Even a once-returner can enjoy all these things and do so without grossly harming others. A non-returner can look forward to rebirth in the Pure Abodes, exclusive enlightened worlds where life is long and things are good yet the beings strive for final knowledge and liberation from rebirth. The Buddha spoke of these rarefied worlds, which should never be confounded with ordinary conceptions of heaven (sagga). They likely led to the devotional extremes of Pure Land Buddhism, a prominent bhakti tradition in Mahayana Buddhism which is an awful lot like the Brahminical conception of the World of Brahma in Hinduism.

• Blessed are the cheese makers (Monty Python lol)