8. Craving & Clinging

The second spot in the sequence of dependent co-arising where desire and passion play a major role comes after sensory contact. The factors following on contact, in sequence, are:

You may recall that in the four noble truths, the Buddha identifies craving as the cause of suffering, and the clinging-aggregates as suffering itself. This means that all the factors in dependent co-arising from ignorance through craving fall under the second noble truth, the origination of suffering, whereas the first noble truth, suffering, begins with clinging and goes all the way through death.

This suggests a sharp line between craving and clinging, as two separate noble truths with two separate duties appropriate to them, abandoning and comprehending, respectively. In actuality, though, the line isn’t as sharply defined as it might appear.

There’s a dialog where the Buddha defines the cause of suffering as desire and passion (SN 42:11). There are also discourses where he says to abandon desire and passion with regard to anything that’s inconstant, stressful, or not-self, such as the five aggregates (SN 22:139; SN 22:142; SN 22:145). Now, abandoning is the duty with regard to craving. So these passages, taken together, say in effect that desire and passion are equivalent to craving. But there are also discourses where the Buddha equates desire and passion with clinging (SN 22:121; SN 35:110). This raises the question: If that’s the case, what’s then the difference between craving and clinging?

The first step in answering this question is to note that the Pali word for craving, taṇhā, also means thirst. The Pali word for clinging, upādāna, also means sustenance and the act of taking sustenance from something, as when a tree takes sustenance from the soil, or a fire takes sustenance from its fuel. In other words, craving is associated with hunger, and clinging with the act of feeding.

The second step in answering the question is to note that the Buddha didn’t define suffering as clinging. He defined it as clinging-aggregates, or the act of clinging to the aggregates.

Now, when you’re looking for something to eat but haven’t yet found it yet, you’re hungry. That’s the hunger of craving. When you start eating food, your hunger is still there even though you’ve located your food, latched on to it, and started taking it in. That hunger is what keeps you eating until you’re full. In the same way, there’s still craving present in the act of clinging to the aggregates. That’s where the desire and passion are.

This observation is in line with a statement that the Buddha makes elsewhere in the Canon, in SN 22:139, SN 22:142, and SN 22:145, where he asks what you should abandon when you see that the aggregates are inconstant, stressful, and not-self. The answer is that you should abandon, not the aggregates themselves, but any desire and passion for them. Because the duty with regard to the second noble truth, of craving, is to abandon it, he’s pointing to the fact that you have to comprehend the clinging-aggregates as constituting suffering, but the aggregates themselves are not to be abandoned. Only the craving and clinging—the desire and passion for them—should be dropped.

This is why, when Sāriputta notes in MN 28, that “Any subduing of desire and passion, any abandoning of desire and passion for these five clinging-aggregates is the cessation of stress,” he’s not in conflict with his own statement in MN 141 where he follows the Buddha’s more standard formulation in saying that the cessation of stress is the abandoning of the three types of craving. In both cases, you’re subduing and abandoning desire and passion—what Sāriputta identified in SN 22:2 as the essential message of what the Buddha taught.

So, given that both craving and clinging are identical with desire and passion, the factors of craving and clinging are the second spot in dependent co-arising where desire and passion play a role.

This means that, in the standard description of dependent co-arising, desire and passion play a role both before sensory contact and feeling—as factors sustaining ignorance—and after, as factors following on feeling and leading up to becoming.