You Can Cling if you Want To Cling
Clinging leads to suffering
but neither the clinging nor the suffering are
events frozen within their own boundaries.
The clinging event evolves from its causes — including the event of reifying a self in the one clinging and also reifying a self in the thing being clung to. “Clinging” is merely a word being designated roughly onto a perceived stage in the process that is unfolding.
A river running from one village through another might have two different names but there is no actual place that can be pointed to where one becomes the other.
Likewise, the suffering that arises is causally connected to the thing that started it. It is linked like a snow melt is linked to the river it becomes. The fear of loss, the joy of acquisition that fades, and all the things that are viewed as the suffering —they all result from the clinging. They are all connected to the initial joy of expectation. They are not the separate things (clinging, suffering) we imagine.
When we go to the beach, the pleasure of cooling down depends on getting hot again on the towel; they are mutually dependent.
Just as there is no actual blue in existence, only the effect of certain light rays on the optical system eventually interpreted by the blind brain, clinging leads to suffering without any sense of blame or recrimination.
You are not being punished.
There is no “must not”, only the recognition of the mechanical fact that might suggest you don’t stick your finger into a live electricity socket.
