Opening the Tightly Closed Fist

This blog will have a lot to say about what I term “the tightly clinging fist” to describe the primary mechanism that leads to suffering (dukkha). Our human tendency to cling to wanting things to be different than the way they are will be an underlying theme through many of the posts, so I want to present an introduction to this concept here.

In the teachings of the Buddhadharma, and in particular, the Four Noble Truths, there is a lot of airtime given to the releasing of attachment and opening the tight fist of grasping. The Buddha knew, somehow, that this tendency to hold tightly to things is an inherent part of being human. In fact, it’s called the "grasp reflex," and we are born with it. I teach that the entire Buddhadharma can be summed up in one movement of the hand: opening the tight clinging fist. Therefore, this will be one of the most important ideas throughout this blog, and the throughout the book that will be built from it.

If you move an object, such as your finger, across a newborn infant's palm, they will grab hold of it with their tiny fingers (Anekar & Bordoni, 2022) . A newborn's grip can be so strong that they can even support some of their own weight for brief periods. Research indicates that when infants hold onto their mothers during breast feeding, the infant's heartbeat tends to slow down. Since touch is the first way we form relationships with our parents, giving and receiving this kind of “affective touch” is vitally important (Della Longa et al., 2021). We must get a lot of soothing and a sense of security from holding and being held in this way. No wonder it’s so hard for us to let go. From the standpoint of evolution, the grasp reflex was a necessary survival instinct in pre-human primates, both for clinging to the mother, but also for moving through the trees from branch to branch at the earliest age possible. Obviously, then, clinging and grasping alone are not necessarily bad things.

Where we get into trouble is when we cling to things that are impermanent. This kind of clinging results in what Joseph Goldstein calls "rope burn" as the thing we are clinging to slides through our hands. Clinging to a sense pleasure, to a world view or belief, or to a sense of self, can all result in rope burn. So how do we manage this existential human predicament? Letting go of clinging appears to be a very counterintuitive move. It could result in a fatal plunge from a great height if you’re a primate. Fear of falling is one of the only two fears that humans are born with, loud noises being the other (Graff, 2018). Releasing the tight grip around something does not mean that we must let go of it completely and lose it. It means that we can still have whatever is in our hand, but we hold it differently and with more space, making it easier to live with its comings and goings.

When we relax this tight fist, we give the thing we’re clinging to more space in which to move. By giving the thing more space, we decrease the size of the unpleasant experience by increasing the size of the space around it. I like to illustrate this concept by using a small eraser that I bought in Japan. If I put the eraser in my palm, and then close the hand around it making a tight fist, the eraser suddenly becomes quite large, filling up all the space inside my hand. As soon as I open the hand, however, the eraser becomes quite small relative to the space around it. Not only that, but now I can investigate the eraser from all sides and even use the eraser as an eraser. Plus, I can see the whimsical graphics on the paper wrapped around the eraser (a classic Japanese touch). None of this was available to me when the hand was closed and clinging. And to reiterate, I’m not throwing the eraser away, I’m just holding it differently.

One of my teachers, Jack Kornfield, says that his teacher (and my “grandteacher”), the Venerable Ajahn Chah Subhaddo, used to sidle up next to a monk at his monastery during walking meditation and ask them, "Are you suffering today?" If they said yes, he would reply, "Hmm... Must be very attached!" and then he would just kind of chuckle and walk away, leaving the monk to contemplate this teaching. Here is what Ajahn Chah said about opening the tight fist of clinging:

If you let go a little, you'll have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you'll have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you'll have complete peace.

The Monkey Trap

I’ve been told that in Southeast Asia, wild monkeys can be a real headache, at least for humans. An acquaintance of mine, who has traveled to Sri Lanka, told me that primates tend to throw coconuts and other objects at tourists from their perches in the tress. As a result, trapping and (hopefully) relocating monkeys is something of a thriving business there. To catch them, the trappers make a small wooden box with a hinged lid and a small, round hole in the front. Then the box is secured to a tree and some kind of food, such as a date, is placed inside, and the lid fastened shut.

Pretty soon, a monkey will come along, and smelling the food inside the box, it will work its hand through the hole and grab hold of the snack. What the monkey soon discovers, however, is that it cannot remove its hand while grasping the food because its fist is too big to come through the hole. Apparently a monkey will stay that way, with its hand stuck in the trap clinging tightly to the date, until someone comes along and captures it. The solution is obvious, of course: if the monkey would let go of the food, it could easily free itself.

Maybe it’s because of our shared DNA or our evolutionary lineage, but humans are a lot like the monkeys of Sri Lanka. We see something that we want, and then we grab hold of it and won't let go; clinging onto it for dear life with a tight, grasping fist, unable to free ourselves from the suffering that this kind of behavior causes. In the Buddhadharma, the origin of suffering is said to be "desire that gives rise to a sense of self." We see something we want, and the mind creates a thought such as, "I need that," or "that should be mine." The object doesn't have to be a thing. Often it is a thought or a way of being that we are clinging to so desperately, saying, "this is me!" We can't get our hand out of the trap, and so we are stuck in our habitual patterns of thinking and behaving that will not let us release our hold.

Perhaps if we ask the monkeys how we might free ourselves from this “mind trap” they would tell us the obvious solution: open the hand and release the grip. Then we might be able to hold onto our snack and work our hand back out of the trap. It takes a light touch. In the second of the Four Noble Truths, we are advised to “abandon the origins of suffering” and when we do the suffering will stop. So, if the suffering is caused by clinging, stop clinging! It's that simple, and at the same time as we have already seen, it’s extremely difficult.

When you become aware that you are suffering, such as when you are feeling stuck in an upsetting or difficult emotion, such as fear or anger, the first step is to acknowledge that you are suffering. Your hand is trapped in a monkey box of your own making. Then imagine your tightly closed fist inside the box, clinging with all its might to the thing you want. Finally, imagine the tight fist opening and allow whatever it is that you are holding so tightly to be released, or to just be held lightly in the palm of your hand. This from Lama Gendun Rinpoche:

Happiness cannot be found through
great effort and willpower;
but is already present, in open relaxation
and letting go...
Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you relax this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there,
open and inviting.
Make use of this spaciousness,
this freedom and natural ease.
Don't search any further.
Don't go into the tangled jungle
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting at home,
in front of your own hearth. 

References

Anekar , A. A., & Bordoni, B. (2022, October 24). Palmar grasp reflex [Web log post]. Retrieved from StatPearls website: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK553133/

Della Longa, L., Dragovic, D., & Farroni, T. (2021). In touch with the heartbeat: Newborns' cardiac sensitivity to affective and non-affective touch. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(5). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18052212

Graff, S. (2018, October 23). Inside fear and its disorders [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-blog/2018/october/inside-fear-and-its-disorders#:~:text=Everyone%20is%20born%20with%20the,like%20the%20dark%20or%20monsters.