The first time most people hear "self-clinging" in a Buddhist context, they assume the topic is selfishness, ego, or narcissism. It is none of these. The Buddhist term 我執 (ātma-graha, self-clinging) is a much more specific and far more pervasive claim: it says that the moment any conscious being opens its eyes, it overlays experience with a kind of "solidity bias" — a felt sense that *this self* and *this world* are self-standing things, possessing their own nature independent of how they are being seen, named, or used. The Buddha's analysis is that this bias, not bad character, is the root engine of the entire cycle of confusion and suffering. And the further claim — and this is the part the contemporary mind needs to sit with — is that this bias is not a personal failing. It is the basic cognitive texture of unawakened experience. 二種我執 (dvidhātma-grāha, the "two kinds of self-clinging") is the classical Buddhist map of that texture, split open for inspection.
This piece walks through what the concept actually says, how to recognize it in ordinary life, why the contemporary world has a particular stake in it, and where the most common misreadings go wrong.
这个概念在说什么 (What This Concept Is About)
The "self" being talked about is not the everyday "self"
The classical sources — particularly the *Madhyamakāvatāra-bhāṣya* commentary (*《入中論善顯密意疏》*) and Tsongkhapa's *Lam rim chen mo*'s essence condensed in the *Lam 'phrin bsdus* (*《菩提道次第略論》*) — are precise about one thing: when they say "self" (我, ātman), they do not mean "a person" in the ordinary sense. They mean a particular claim about the *mode of being* of any person or thing. Specifically, they mean something that:
- is not dependent on conceptual imputation (不依名言分別), - is not established by thought-construction (不由分別增上安立), - and is able to "stand on its own" (能自立、自性成立).
That is a metaphysical claim, not a social one. A Buddhist who is being polite, generous, and even saintly can still — in the very act of being a saint — be inflecting experience with this "self-standing" overlay. The two commentaries are at pains to flag this so that the reader does not slide into thinking 我執 is just a moral problem with bad people.
The Tibetan commentarial line, drawing on Candrakīrti, calls the grasped object 寔有 / 自相有 / 自性有 / 勝義有 — translating roughly as "inherently existent," "having its own character from its own side," or "existing in the ultimate sense as a self-standing thing." These are synonyms in this literature, all pointing at the same cognitive move: registering something as if its way of being were intrinsic to it, rather than constituted by conditions, parts, naming, and use.
Why "two," if the self being grasped is one kind of thing?
Here is the second conceptual move. The two traditions represented in our source — Candrakīrti's line through the *Madhyamakāvatāra* commentary, and Tsongkhapa's systematic reformulation — agree on a key point that is easy to miss: **the split into "person" and "phenomena" is not a split in the *self* that is grasped, but a split in the *base* (所依有法) on which the grasping is done.** There is one kind of "self-standing" claim. It is made in two places: on a person, and on a thing. That is the whole justification for the "two."
This is why the *Madhyamakāvatāra* commentary states: *"二無我及二種我執的區分，不是由所破之『我』本身另有兩類，而是依其所依有法而分。"* — The split into two self-lessnesses and two self-clingings is not because there are two kinds of "self" being refuted, but because there are two bases to which the one and same self-claim is applied.
So:
- 補特伽羅我執 (pudgala-ātma-graha, person-self-clinging) — grasping at a person as a self-standing essence. The person here is the "I" or the "you" or any sentient being considered as a unified, owner-like locus. Its object is the person *as* a single substantive thing; its character is to take "I am" to be referring to something with its own nature. - 法我執 (dharma-ātma-graha, dharma-self-clinging) — grasping at phenomena (dharmas) as self-standing essences. The phenomena here include everything: the five aggregates (色受想行識, form, feeling, perception, formation, consciousness), the sense fields (眼耳鼻舌身意), the objects of the senses, the external world (器世間), and even the things usually called "mine."
When the *Heart Sutra* (*《般若波羅蜜多心經》*) famously says 「照見五蘊皆空，度一切苦厄」 — "having seen the five aggregates as empty, one crosses all suffering" — it is in effect describing the seeing-through of 法我執 at its root. The aggregates are the most intimate objects of dharma-grasping, and the heart of the practice is to see them as they actually are: not as self-standing solids, but as dependently arisen streams.
Person-grasping, dharma-grasping, "mine"-grasping — keeping the layers distinct
A section of the *Madhyamakāvatāra* commentary is devoted to keeping three things apart that popular exposition tends to fuse:
1. 俱生薩迦耶見 (innate view of self-identity) — the spontaneous, pre-reflective sense of "I" arising with respect to oneself. The commentary specifies its object: the "I" or the "mere person" imputed on the aggregates. Its defining mark is that it spontaneously gives rise to an "I-feeling" (我覺者). 2. 俱生我所執 (innate "mine"-clinging) — the spontaneous sense that certain things are "mine" or "belong to me." Its object is the "mine-able dharmas" (我所法): my eyes, my body, my feelings, my reputation, my phone. To take "this is mine" as a real, owner-like relation is its character. 3. 法我執 (dharma-self-clinging) — grasping at phenomena as such (eyes *as* eyes, anger *as* anger, money *as* money) as self-standing things.
The commentary's warning is precise: if you do not separate these, 薩迦耶見 collapses into 法我執 and you lose the ability to talk about *who* is suffering and *what* is being clung to. The "mine" is a distinct layer: when you say "this is my body" or "this is my anxiety," the "my" is a 我所執 move, and it sits between person-grasping (the "I") and dharma-grasping (the "body" / "anxiety"). Most contemporary self-help talk about "my anxiety," "my trauma," "my story" is doing this three-layer sandwich without realizing it.
俱生 vs 徧計 — the deepest layer vs. the philosophical layer
The *Lam 'phrin bsdus* (*《菩提道次第略論》*) draws a sharp line that is one of the most practically important distinctions in the concept:
- 徧計無明 (conceptually-constructed ignorance) is the ignorance tied to a particular philosophical position. A Vedāntin posits a *permanent, omnipresent, autonomous Self* (常一自在之我); a Sāṃkhya philosopher posits *subtle particles* (極微); some Buddhist schools posit *a stream of inner awareness* (內識) or *the truly existent storehouse-consciousness* (唯識實有). Each school has its own constructed view, and the "ignorance" of that view is the conceptual layer. - 俱生二種我執 (innate two-fold self-clinging) is something different and much more fundamental. It is the spontaneous, pre-philosophical, beginningless overlay of "self-standingness" on persons and dharmas that is present in *every* sentient being regardless of their school, sect, or creed. The commentary makes a strong claim: this is the actual root of samsāra, not the philosophical disagreements.
Why does this matter? Because if the only problem were philosophical error, then correcting one's intellectual position would solve it. But the Buddhist diagnosis is far more unsettling: even after you intellectually reject the existence of a permanent self and reject the reification of phenomena, the *felt* sense of solidity remains, in the very texture of every experience. That felt sense is the 俱生 layer, and it is what practice is ultimately addressing.
Two surprising orderings: how the two clingings arise, and how they are untied
The commentaries describe two sequences that seem, on first reading, to contradict each other. They do not.
Arising order (生起次第): *法我執 first, then 補特伽羅我執 arises from it.* In other words, our sense of "I" is built on top of our sense of "things." We first register phenomena as solid, and from that foundation the sense of a solid "self" who owns and inhabits the solid phenomena crystallizes. As the *Lam 'phrin bsdus* states: *"我執生起時，先由法我執引生補特伽羅我執。"*
Untying order (修斷次第): *Person-self-clinging is seen through first, then dharma-self-clinging is seen through.* The path reverses the arising order. The *Lam 'phrin bsdus* gives the reason clearly: this is not because person-emptiness is shallower than dharma-emptiness (it is not — both are equally empty of inherent existence). It is because the person is easier to analyze and decide. The person is a composite (a heap of five aggregates, in classical analysis); we can see the heap, we can see it depends on parts, and we can release the "I" claim on it. But each individual dharma — a color, a feeling, an eye, an ear, an external object — feels even more solid and immediate. So the path starts with the easier analytical work, and from the confidence gained there, turns to the harder work of seeing through dharmas.
The commentaries even note that within dharmas themselves, some are easier to analyze than others. The reflections in a mirror are easier to see as dependent; the eye, the ear, the external world are much harder. This is why "seeing through the person" is celebrated as a great accomplishment on the path, but the path does not stop there.
Position in the whole path
To place 二種我執 in its place in the larger scheme: this concept is the cognitive heart of what makes samsāra. The chain the *Lam 'phrin bsdus* lays out is exact. Self-clinging on persons and dharmas generates 無明 (ignorance): not simple not-knowing, but the active overlay of solidity. From that ignorance arise 增益 / 非理作意 / 虛妄分別 — exaggerated projection, inappropriate attention, and deluded conceptualization — in which some experiences are inflated into "wonderful, this is me, this is mine" and others into "horrible, this is me, this is mine." From those arise the afflictions (煩惱) — greed, aversion, jealousy, pride. From the afflictions arise karma (業), and from karma arises rebirth and renewed experience (受生). At the center of this whole chain, fueling each link, sit the two self-clingings.
The reversal is the path. When the wisdom of selflessness (無我慧) directly sees that neither person nor dharmas are self-standing, the ignorance weakens; the inappropriate attention is starved; the afflictions lose their fuel; karmic propulsion dies down; rebirth's cycle unwinds. This is why the two self-clingings are called "一切錯亂之根本" — the root of all confusion.
生活里的走查 (Walking It Through in Daily Life)
Classical definitions are easy to nod along to. The real test is whether they actually land in a working life. Let me walk through a few ordinary scenes, mapping them carefully to the technical definition, and pausing at the points where the popular mapping usually goes wrong.
Scene 1: The bad day that becomes "I am a failure"
You give a presentation that doesn't land. You walk out of the room. By the time you reach the elevator, the experience has been transmuted: you are no longer having a "presentation that didn't go well"; you have become "a person who failed," then "a person who always fails," and before you reach the lobby you are experiencing what the Buddhist literature calls a *conditioned sense of self-with-suffusion-of-failure*.
Now let us map this, using only the classical definition.
- The "presentation" is a dharma. When it is registered as a real thing that happened, with its own nature, that is the seed of 法我執 — grasping at the event as a self-standing thing. (Strictly, in the classical analysis, even the further moves of "a thing happened" already carry the dharma-grasping overlay.) - The "I" that is now supposedly the kind of person who fails — that is the 補特伽羅我執 move: registering "I" as a self-standing essence with a fixed property ("failer"). The classical source phrases this exactly: grasping a person as 寔有 / 自相有 — as a really existing, self-charactered thing. - The "my failure" and the "my performance" — the "my" structure — is the 我所執 layer. The commentaries specify that "mine" is not the same as the dharma itself. The failure is a dharma; "my failure" is a 我所 claim on that dharma; "I am a failer" is the 補特伽羅我執 that crystallizes on top.
The important classical point, often lost on modern self-help, is the *arising order*. The dharma-grasping (this is a real thing that happened) precedes and grounds the person-grasping (I am the kind of person this happened to). So the 修斷 order, ironically, is easier to begin at the top of the pyramid: see that there is no self-standing "failer-person" that owns this event, and the bottom of the pyramid becomes more negotiable. The two clingings are layered, not parallel.
Where the popular mapping goes wrong: most contemporary talk about "I am a failure" treats it as a *thought* or a *belief* to be corrected or re-framed. The Buddhist analysis is more radical. It is not that the belief is false; it is that the very *form* of "I + a property" is a fundamental cognitive move whose grammar is the problem. The work is not to replace "I am a failure" with "I am capable," because that is just a new property stuck onto the same self-standing "I." It is to see the "I" itself, and the "failure" itself, as lacking the self-standing essence that the experience was overlaying onto them.
Scene 2: The lost job and the lost identity
A redundancy notice arrives. The next week is a strange, hollow time. People keep asking "so what do you do?" and the question lands like a small blow.
The classical analysis is again multi-layered:
- The job is a dharma — a structured set of activities, relationships, recognitions, income, status. When it is registered as a real thing that is being lost, that is the dharma-grasping layer. - "My job" is the 我所執 layer: this dharma being claimed as belonging to "me." - "I am a person without a job" is the person-grasping: the "I" is now apparently a real thing that is missing a real property. Often this is where contemporary identity-talk intensifies the wound. "I don't know who I am anymore" is, in classical terms, an *intensification* of 補特伽羅我執 — not a letting go of it. The very "I" that is being searched for is the very self-essence that was never there.
Contemporary therapeutic culture often recommends "find your authentic self" as the way out. The classical analysis is more diagnostic: the search for the authentic self is itself a self-clinging move. The "authentic self" being searched for is exactly the kind of self-standing essence that the analysis is showing does not exist. The relief is not in finding the self but in seeing through the demand that there be one.
This is not nihilism. There is still a person, with a body, with skills, with relationships, with a moment-by-moment stream of experience. The Buddhist claim is not that this is unreal, but that the *self-standing* character that the experience is being layered with is being added, not found. The redundancy, the body, the relationships, the skills — these are all dharmas, dependently arisen, in flux. The person is the imputed locus on this flux. None of that needs to be defended by adding an essence.
Scene 3: Social media, the algorithm-built self, and the screen
A particularly contemporary variant of all this happens on the feed. Modern platforms build an inferred user profile, then surface content based on it, then the user reacts, then the profile updates. The user *feels* as if there is a real, persistent "I" whose preferences are being served, and the platform *behaves as if* there is such an "I." The mutual reinforcement is striking.
A few careful mappings, while being explicit that the analogy is not the same as the doctrinal point:
- The inferred user profile is treated, by the system and by the user, as a self-standing entity with a fixed nature. *As an analogy only*, this resembles the structure of dharma-grasping: a constructed thing being treated as if it had its own nature. - The felt sense "this is who I am" that the user experiences when looking at their own feed resembles 補特伽羅我執 — the person-as-essence overlay. - The "my followers," "my views," "my engagement," "my platform" — the 我所執 layer, where dharmas are claimed as "mine."
The classical Buddhist analysis would say, in a strict sense: the analogy is suggestive but the mechanism is not identical. A user profile is a constructed symbolic representation. The self-clinging diagnosed in the Abhidharma and Madhyamaka traditions is something more basic — a *cognitive-affective overlay* in the texture of awareness itself, present in every moment of experience regardless of whether a smartphone is involved. Modern predictive-processing accounts of how the brain constructs a "self-model" to maintain internal coherence is *consistent with* the cognitive layer the Buddhist analysis is pointing at, but the equivalence is unproven. The neuroscience is suggestive, not confirmatory. The classical analysis is its own tradition with its own criteria, and it does not need neuroscience to be valid, just as it does not need to be confirmed by neuroscience to be worth taking seriously.
The practical point, however, is robust. The smartphone-and-feed environment is a particularly efficient *amplifier* of both kinds of self-clinging. It presents the user with an externally constructed essence-like image of themselves (the profile, the highlights, the metrics) and rewards the user for overlaying a self-essence onto it. The classical remedy — looking carefully at how the "I" is being constructed moment by moment, and how the "things" in the feed are dependently arisen and not self-standing — is, on this reading, exactly the right kind of practice for the environment, even if it was articulated in a very different context.
Scene 4: The argument with a partner
"你每次都這樣" — "you always do this." A familiar line in any long relationship.
Two layers again, and a common mis-mapping:
- The "you" that is being grasped as someone who "always" does "this" is 補特伽羅我執 on the *other* person. The commentary notes that grasping *another* person as self-standing is a sub-case of 補特伽羅我執 (and may be innate 補特伽羅我執 without yet being 俱生薩迦耶見, which specifically is the spontaneous "I-feeling" about oneself). So the resentment of "you" is a real, classical person-grasping on the other. - The "this" — the specific behavior being generalized into a property of the person — is a dharma-grasping move. The behavior in the moment is a stream of dharmas. The "this" being reified into a stable property is the dharma-grasping that supports the person-grasping.
Where the popular mapping goes wrong: people think the problem in the argument is that one side is "personalizing" the other side's behavior. The classical analysis is more precise. The problem is not that the partner is being *added* to the situation; the problem is that *both* parties are doing the reification move — "you are a kind of person" + "this is a kind of act" — and the two reifications are mutually reinforcing. The remedial practice is not "don't take it personally" in the pop-psychology sense, but the far more demanding work of seeing that the "you" and the "this" are both dependently arisen and not self-standing. This does not mean the partner's behavior is excused. It means the way the behavior is being registered — as a self-standing property of a self-standing person — is the texture of self-clinging.
Scene 5: A panic attack
A wave of anxiety arrives. In the moment, it feels like "I am drowning in something real and solid."
Mapping, carefully:
- The anxiety itself, as a felt state, is a dharma — a stream of physical sensations, mental formations, and cognitions. Registering it as a *self-standing thing* that one is *trapped in* is dharma-grasping. ("This anxiety is real, it is a thing, I am inside it.") - "My anxiety" — the 我所執 layer, where the dharma is claimed as belonging to "me." - "I am an anxious person" — person-grasping: the "I" is being overlaid with a property that is now treated as a fixed character.
The arising order is again visible: the dharma-grasping (this is a real thing) precedes and supports the person-grasping (I am this kind of person). The classical path order is also visible: it's easier to begin by investigating whether there is a self-standing anxious person (it is easier to see through than the immediacy of the panic itself), and from that see-through, to start seeing through the "anxiety" itself as a constructed stream.
The contemporary mis-mapping is enormous here. Therapeutic culture has many useful tools, but it often implicitly relies on the reified sense of "anxiety" as a real thing that one "has" or "is." Some of the most useful contemporary interventions (mindfulness-based approaches, certain somatic therapies) succeed precisely when they interrupt the dharma-grasping on the felt state, allowing it to be seen as arising and passing. The classical description is that this is working *because* it is partially loosening the 法我執 at the felt-state level. This is not a claim that therapy = Buddhism, nor that neuroscience has confirmed the dharma analysis; it is a recognition that some contemporary tools are accidentally operating in the territory that the classical analysis has been mapping for a long time.
当代人为什么需要它 (Why Contemporary People Need This Concept)
The first reason is that the contemporary world is unusually efficient at *amplifying* both kinds of self-clinging. This is not an accident. The modern attention economy is, in a sense, an economic engine that runs on the felt solidity of "I" and "things."
- Identity-as-product. Contemporary culture, especially online, encourages a constant construction, maintenance, and projection of "who I am." Personal branding, identity expression, the curated self, the visible self — all of these are not simply *uses* of self-clinging, they are *infrastructures* built on top of it. The "I" that is being curated is, on the classical analysis, the very 補特伽羅我執 that the practice is meant to loosen. The pressure to maintain a coherent, public, defensible self is, in this light, a chronic reinforcement of the cognitive move the analysis is diagnosing. - Algorithmically-stabilized phenomena. The feed, the search result, the recommendation, the persistent profile — all of these present dharmas in a way that feels stable, self-standing, and verifiable. The classical 法我執 diagnosis says: phenomena are dependently arisen, conditioned, in flux. The contemporary information environment tends to *invert* this, presenting a stabilized, ranked, ranked-by-importance, persistent version of "the world." The cognitive bias the diagnosis is pointing at is, on this reading, being constantly fed. - Therapeutic culture's "true self" trap. A great deal of contemporary psychological language is built around concepts of "the authentic self," "finding yourself," "being true to who you are." These are not bad-faith moves, and they often help. But the classical analysis is diagnostic of the very form of these moves. The "authentic self" being searched for is structurally the 補特伽羅 self-essence. The deeper, more difficult and more freeing move, on this reading, is not to find the authentic self but to see through the demand for one. This is not a dismissal of therapeutic work; it is a recognition of where the limit of that work is, and what the further journey might look like. - Burnout, anxiety, the chronic sense of inadequacy. When the self is being constantly maintained as a defended essence, the cost is high. Burnout is, in part, the cost of maintaining a self-essence against constant evidence of change. Anxiety is, in part, the cost of treating a self-standing self as the thing that must be protected against all threats. The classical diagnosis is not that these are caused by bad thoughts but that they are partially *constituted* by the self-clinging move. - Politically and interpersonally, the cost of reification. When persons and groups are reified as self-standing essences (with fixed natures, fixed cultures, fixed destinies), the room for change, nuance, and compassion narrows. The classical diagnosis of 補特伽羅我執 has a quietly radical implication: persons are imputed on streams; the reification is a construction. This is not a denial of persons, but a loosening of the grip of essences on how we see them. The 修斷 path of "seeing through the person first" can, in this sense, be a contribution to a saner collective life as well as a personal one.
The second reason is that the concept offers a kind of *precision* that contemporary discourse on self and suffering often lacks. The map is detailed: which kind of self-clinging, at which layer, on which base, with which fuel. This precision is not academic. It is what allows the practice to be aimed rather than vague. Without the two-kind map, "letting go of self" can become a vague aspiration. With it, there are specific sites to investigate, specific moves to recognize, specific reifications to loosen.
The third reason is that the concept is *humbling without being demoralizing*. The 俱生 / 徧計 distinction is the key. If the only problem were philosophical error, then intellectually correcting oneself would suffice. The classical analysis is more realistic and more kind: this is beginningless, ubiquitous, not your fault, and the work is to recognize it again and again, not to defeat it once and for all. The path is long, the practice is patient, and the self-clinging is not a sign of personal failure but a feature of being a sentient being. That is a different and, for many contemporary people, more workable frame than the heroic "I will conquer my ego" narrative.
常见误读与澄清 (Common Misreadings and Clarifications)
Misreading 1: 我執 is just selfishness, ego, or narcissism.
This is the most common mis-translation in modern usage, and it is wrong. Self-clinging is a far more basic cognitive move than selfishness. A self-sacrificing bodhisattva, in the very act of sacrificing, is also overlaying experience with self-standingness — on "the self being sacrificed," on "the suffering being addressed," on "the dharmas of the practice." The 俱生 layer is not a moral failing. It is a cognitive-affective texture. Calling it "selfishness" makes the practice look like a character-improvement project; in fact, it is a fundamental investigation into how experience is being constructed.
Misreading 2: The two clingings are two different *selves*.
The two clingings are one *kind* of grasping, applied to two different *bases*. There is not a "self-of-the-person" and a "self-of-phenomena" as two separate essences. The same self-standing move is made in two places. The "two" is in the bases, not in the self. This is explicit in both commentaries: *"二無我及二種我執的區分，不是由所破之『我』本身另有兩類，而是依其所依有法而分。"*
Misreading 3: The two are equal in difficulty, and the path works on both at once.
The classical analysis is precise that they are not equal in immediacy. Arising order: 法我執 first, 補特伽羅我執 second. Path order: 補特伽羅無我 first, 法無我 second. The reversal is not a contradiction; it reflects the fact that the composite person is easier to analyze than the immediacy of the dharmas, even though both are equally empty of self-standingness. A common contemporary simplification is "let go of the self, and the rest will follow." This is roughly true as a direction, but the actual work of dharma-grasping is harder, longer, and demands its own techniques. The two are not interchangeable.
Misreading 4: 無我 means there is no self, no person, no thing.
This is the most damaging popular misreading. *None* of the classical sources on this topic claim non-existence. They deny *self-standingness* (自性成立) — the claim that persons and dharmas exist with their own essence from their own side, independent of conditions, parts, and imputation. The *Heart Sutra*'s "五蘊皆空" does not mean the five aggregates do not exist; it means they are empty of the kind of self-standing essence that the experience was overlaying onto them. The path is not a nihilistic erasure of persons and things; it is a *seeing-through* of the overlay. The person, the body, the feelings, the world — all remain. What is let go is the demand that they be self-standing solids.
Misreading 5: 我所執 and 法我執 are the same thing.
The *Madhyamakāvatāra* commentary takes specific care to keep them apart. To grasp "my body" as a real, owned thing is not the same as grasping "body" as a real thing. The first is 我所執 on the dharma of body. The second is 法我執 on the dharma of body. If you collapse the two, you collapse 薩迦耶見 into 法我執, and you lose the ability to talk about *who* is suffering in the arising of "I" and "mine." The "my" layer is doing real work in the classical analysis. It is doing real work in our actual experience too — most of the everyday felt-sense of self is in the "my" claims on things.
Misreading 6: 二種我執 is solved by adopting the right philosophical position.
The 俱生 / 徧計 distinction is the key correction here. Different schools posit different objects of self-clinging — permanent Self, subtle particles, inner awareness, storehouse-consciousness, and so on — and each school has its own 徧計無明 tied to its own positing. The Buddhist work is not just to refute these posited objects, although that is part of it. The deeper work is to recognize and loosen the *felt* 俱生 self-clinging that is present in every moment regardless of one's philosophical school. This is why Buddhist practice has a meditative and contemplative dimension that does not reduce to argument. The path is not just a better theory; it is a different mode of attending to experience.
Misreading 7: This is a uniquely Indian or ancient problem.
The diagnostic categories of person-grasping and dharma-grasping are, on careful reading, surprisingly portable. Wherever a human being takes "I" to be a real, fixed, self-standing thing, and takes "this" (a feeling, a person, a status, a possession) to be a real, fixed, self-standing thing, the two clingings are operating. The infrastructure of the contemporary world is, as noted, an unusually efficient amplifier of both. This is not a "Buddhist problem" belonging to a far-off culture. It is a description of a basic operation of experience, and the practice of loosening it is available, with appropriate translation, to any contemporary person willing to look carefully.
A closing note
The two-kind self-clinging is not a doctrine to be believed or disbelieved. It is a way of attending — a way of noticing, in the very next moment of experience, how the sense of "I" and the sense of "this" are being put together, and how the put-together character of that assembly is being forgotten. The commentaries end up at this point not because they have resolved the problem, but because they have made it specific enough to actually look at. That is the whole gift of the concept: precision that turns the vague wish to "let go" into a series of specific, investigate-able moves in the texture of one's own experience. And that precision is, perhaps, the most contemporary thing about this very old teaching.