Fish-Eat-Fish World

Before the Buddha left home, he had a vision. The world was like a dwindling stream. The water was drying up, drying up. There were fish stranded in the stream, and they were fighting one another over the water. Of course, some of them won out. But even those who won out were still going to die anyhow. That, the Buddha said, was the world. And in the battles that the fish had among one another, a lot of bad karma was made for no purpose at all.

You look at the world around us right now. You can see it really is a fish-eat-fish world, where the big fish are trying to take everything they can for themselves and leave everybody else out. But then it’s not really theirs; they’ll have to leave it. So as the Buddha said, victory over others is nothing compared to victory over yourself—in other words, victory over your greed, your aversion, delusion. That victory, he said, once it’s attained, doesn’t leave you.

So be careful as you look at your mind while you’re meditating. Sometimes little bits of greed come, little bits of anger. You can’t let them take root and grow. You have to be very careful about them, because that’s where the victory is: in seeing them, recognizing them for what they are. As in the stories they tell of the Buddha and Mara: Mara tries to put a thought in the Buddha’s mind, and the Buddha immediately recognizes that’s the work of Mara. So he’s free from it.

So when a thought appears, try to recognize it. Is this a thought that’s coming from greed? Is it coming from aversion? Delusion? In other words, from unskillful emotions? If it is, you don’t have to take it on. Just the fact that your past karma has generated that thought doesn’t mean you have to make new karma with it, aside from letting it go. Then try to figure out where it comes from. We’re here not just to watch things arise. We’re here to figure out, when they arise, why did they arise? What sparked them in the present moment? You want to see the cause arising at the same time as the thing you’re watching.

That’s why the Buddha calls it *samudaya, *arising together. When a thought arises, what else arises with it? Recognize that. When you can recognize it, then you can do something about it. If you just think that everything that comes in your mind is yours, yours, yours, the forces of greed, aversion, delusion take over because you’ve sided with them in advance. You have to realize it’s like a civil war inside. And you want the forces of mindfulness, concentration, discernment to win out. So it is a battle.

We like to hear that the path requires nothing more that relaxing into your awakened nature. But there are no images in the Canon of people relaxing into their awakened nature. It’s all battles, or people looking, trying to develop skills, people searching for something of value. So there’s a battle inside, but it’s a battle that’s really worth winning. And it should be the most interesting battle of all, to figure out the ways in which your mind has been lying to itself and why it doesn’t have to.

So. As the Buddha said, “Better than victory over a thousand thousand others is victory over one person, yourself.” Do your best to bring that victory about.