The Lure and the Orange

I was walking along the coast and looked down and saw what looked like a small, shiny-looking fish with pretty colors lying amidst the sand and stones. It was a fishing lure. It had some embedded grains of dirt on it which made me think it may have been there for a long time. I took it home and had to use needle-nosed pliers to break up the solidified bits of dirt that had hardened around two of the eyelets.

I thought it was a neat thing to have with its bright colors, this thing from the sea. It looks kind of decorative.

But then tonight I looked at it and I was thinking – how could it have been used to actually catch fish? There are no hooks on it, only three eyelets – one in the front, one near the middle on the underside, and one near the tail in the back.

Then the realization hit me that it must have had a hook or hooks on it, and that probably the reason that there are none on it now is because they may have been pulled off by a fish. In other words, a fish may have tried to eat the lure, gotten hooked, and violently pulled away to escape and in the process tearing the hook(s) off of the lure.

That would have taken a lot of force so it would have been a strong fish. It would have been a large fish, so it had lived a long life. And the hook must have been really well lodged into the poor fish in order for there to be enough leverage to rip the steel eyelet of the hook(s) out of the eyelet of the lure.

Suddenly I realized that this lure is not some fascinating thing to have, or something interesting or pretty to look at. It is actually a symbol of violence and suffering.

It reminds me of a book I was reading by a Buddhist teacher who was talking about mindfulness when eating an orange, and being fully aware of the orange’s past – it growing in the sunlight on a tree somewhere, someone one day coming to pick it, it being delivered to a store or wherever, and eventually ending up in this person’s hands as he eats it.

In that context mindfulness is such a positive thing and the situation described sounds so wholesome and good.

But this world is rarely so wholesome and good. Everything is tainted and messy. We may want to see wholesomeness and goodness, and subconsciously we may even screen out things that are not, but all around us is suffering and cruelty in various forms, hidden beneath the things all around us.

I wonder how long that poor fish lived with a hook stuck into its body? How much suffering did it endure at the end of its life?

It made me think of another thing I was reading recently: Native people would catch fish by pulverizing a certain plant which contains a compound which stuns fish and then put into the water so that they could easily catch the fish. [Also read this including warning about the herb mullein.]

That sounds so much more holistic than tricking an animal into biting onto a steel hook which becomes lodged into its mouth so that it can be forcefully reeled in by a nylon fishing line.

We are supposed to be so advanced but sometimes I really wonder about things. Is the way we are living now really more advanced, or less advanced? Are we selective at different levels of consciousness to filter out what we find unpleasant and unwholesome and living in a sort of bubble that is based on delusion?

Why, when people first learned how the native people were catching fish, did that idea not impress itself upon people to change their way of living?

The reality of the lure and the fish is real, no matter how we may try to process it or not process it. How can we as conscious, volitional beings reduce suffering in the world if we’re not aware of what’s going on?