Zen's Golden Fish

Narrates the Zen Buddhist story of Gensha the fisherman and the "Golden Fish," a symbol of enlightenment and describes implications of this story for encouraging and supporting our daily practice of meditation and impact on our daily life and relations in the world

Transcript

Thank you for being here today.

Here's an old Zen story,

The story of the golden fish,

That lands itself without being fished.

In the great kingdom of Song in China,

There lived great master Gensha Shibi.

As a layman he loved fishing,

And he would float down the river in his boat,

Following the other fishermen.

It may have been that he was not even waiting for the fish with the golden scales that lands itself without being fished.

This is the first part of Ika Myōjū,

One Bright Pearl,

Written by Eihei Dōgen,

The 13th century founder of Sōdō Zen Buddhism in Japan.

The golden fish is such a beautiful image that it got me started thinking,

What is the golden fish?

Well,

I learned that it's an image or symbol for enlightenment or realization.

So,

This story works with the question,

Does realization require effort,

Or does it evolve and manifest through effortlessness?

That is,

Do we hook the golden fish or does the golden fish land without being hooked?

We could say that both effort and effortlessness,

And neither effort nor effortlessness.

We could ask in the language of Zen,

Is enlightenment sudden or gradual,

And how does it reveal itself?

The point of many of Dōgen's teachings is that the opposites,

In this case effort and effortlessness,

Or sudden and gradual,

Are dynamically working together and they co-arise dependently.

This is the heart of the Middle Way in Buddhism.

You really can't separate the universe into opposites because everything works as a whole.

The whole dynamic working of the universe is called,

In Japanese,

Zenki,

Or total dynamic functioning.

True,

We have to make some effort.

We had to get up in the morning and make a decision to practice or not,

Or to go to the zendo or the temple or not.

Was that hard for you or easy?

Did you have to deal with any resistances?

How did you cut through them if they were present?

We all come to practice,

To study,

To talk,

To sit together silently,

And we keep digging deeper.

We may attend extended sittings,

Meditation retreats,

Or attend Dharma talks.

The point is that we have to show up.

The fishermen have to wake up early.

They have to get all their gear together and be on the boat,

Row and bait and throw their line out into the water.

But there is also a pause,

A waiting.

We could call it the space in between.

For meditation practice,

It's the just sitting with no gaining mind.

They're not trying to get anywhere,

Allowing ourselves to settle down on our cushions or our chairs.

Just sitting and being open and opening and receiving the Dharma.

We call this turning the Dharma wheel and then the Dharma wheel turns us.

The golden fish jumps into the air and lands in the boat without being fished.

It is often written without being hooked.

We can't will or force realization to happen.

For one thing,

Realization is already happening right now.

Dogen tells us that we sit just like the Buddha did,

Just like the first ancestor of Zen in China,

Bodhidharma did,

Just like he did.

If you keep looking beyond yourself,

You'll miss it.

It's like looking for your eyeglasses that you thought you misplaced and realize you're wearing them.

The golden fish jumps up,

Realization jumps up from don't know mind and lands right in our lap.

Then we say,

Oh,

Oh,

Wow.

Realization becomes apparent when our bodies are relaxed and our minds are clear.

When all the causes and conditions line up,

We will notice something flowing through our karmic consciousness.

We might call it an insight.

We might call it enlightenment or Kensho or Buddha nature or Jijuyu Zanmai,

Which in Japanese means the self-fulfilling Samadhi or the self-fulfilling absorption.

But you know something?

It doesn't really matter what we call it because we live it and it lives us.

When this happens,

The Dharma wheel is turning us and we're turning the Dharma wheel.

Then the hard part of integrating our new understandings and our insights into our actions starts to happen.

And this is absolutely central,

How we bring the practice off our cushions or our sitting practice into everyday life,

Because this is where the rubber meets the road.

In the next part of the story,

Gensha sees the impermanence of life.

He stops fishing,

Leaves his lay life aside and enters the monastery.

The sudden,

Often tragic awareness of impermanence and the transformation it evokes is a common theme in the Zen literature.

For Gensha,

It was the sudden death of his father who fell out of the fishing boat and drowned.

For Dogen,

Who is telling this story,

It was the death of his mother when he was a toddler and he saw the incense burning and dissolving into smoke and disappearing at our funeral.

I came to Zen because I was suffering,

Felt dissatisfaction with my life.

That's the simple,

Most honest and most straightforward answer that I could give.

It seems to me that just about everyone who comes to Zen or spiritual practices in general,

Is somehow motivated by some sort of suffering or loss,

Or feelings of dis-ease or anxiety,

Or because of suffering related to some kind of realization of impermanence,

As was the case with Gensha or Dogen.

Okamura Roshi talks about the Dharma fishing everyone.

Why did you come to Buddhism or to meditation practice?

Was it your will?

Were you fished?

Was it some combination of both?

We are all often sometimes lost because of hunger or doubt or feelings of emptiness.

And while we are suffering,

That puts us in the perfect condition for our teachers and the spiritual community to fish us or to hook us.

And then the golden fish jumps into our boats.

We enter practice on the timer or in the zendo or temple and we seek out and request instructions.

We study,

We sit meditating and practicing together.

We stepped inside seeking refuge from the chaos and the toxicity we often encounter in the world.

And as we sit,

We may become aware of our internal chaos and disturbances,

Anxieties,

But we just keep sitting no matter what and simply noticing.

And as we continue to just sit and simply notice,

We may in the stillness of the moment,

Begin to notice and feel a deeper sense of ease.

You know something?

That deeper sense of ease has always been with us,

But it's been hidden from our awareness.

This feeling of ease and calm is our essential being,

Our birthright.

So just keep sitting and take notice.

And please,

For the sake of all beings,

Keep practicing no matter what.

It's extremely important.

Your own deep sense of ease and peacefulness will radiate out for the benefit of all beings.

Thank you.

Reviews

An excellent story/discussion on the dynamic nature of the universe and attaining enlightenment.

What a lovely inspiring talk. Thank you with all my heart, Seiso Roshi

Wow. What a powerful message. This one was meaningful to me 🙏

Thank you 🙏🏽

So timely. Beautifully articulated. 🙏🏻

Thank you for clarifying and reinforcing as to why I choose to Be.

Namaste ✨⚓️✨

I loved what you said about our own inner peace will radiate out for the benefit of the world.

Thank you. I appreciate these teachings.

✨Thank you for keeping these enlightening stories alive 🙏🏽✨

Very creative and inspiring, thank you!!