Dear friends, let me share a story with you. It is excerpted from an Alan Watts lecture entitled The Spectrum of Love.
Once there was a fish who lived in the great ocean, and because the water was transparent, and always conveniently got out of the way of his nose when he moved along, he didn’t know he was in the ocean. Well, one day the fish did a very dangerous thing, he began to think: “Surely I am a most remarkable being, since I can move around like this in the middle of empty space.” Then the fish became confused because of thinking about moving and swimming, and he suddenly had an anxiety paroxysm and thought he had forgotten how. At that moment he looked down and saw the yawning chasm of the ocean depths, and he was terrified that he would drop. Then he thought: “If I could catch hold of my tail in my mouth, I could hold myself up.” And so he curled himself up and snapped at his tail. Unfortunately, his spine wasn’t quite supple enough, so he missed. As he went on trying to catch hold of his tail, the yawning black abyss below became ever more terrible, and he was brought to the edge of total nervous breakdown.
The fish was about to give up, when the ocean, who had been watching with mixed feelings of pity and amusement, said, “What are you doing?” “Oh,” said the fish, “I’m terrified of falling into the deep dark abyss, and I’m trying to catch hold of my tail in my mouth to hold myself up.” So the ocean said, “Well, you’ve been trying that for a long time now, and still you haven’t fallen down. How come?” “Oh, of course, I haven’t fallen down yet,” said the fish, “because, because–I’m swimming!” “Well,” came the reply, “I am the Great Ocean, in which you live and move and are able to be a fish, and I have given all of myself to you in which to swim, and I support you all the time you swim. Instead of exploring the length, breadth, depth, and height of my expanse, you are wasting your time pursuing your own end.” From then on, the fish put his own end behind him (where it belonged) and set out to explore the ocean.
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Yoga
One way of translating Patanjali’s definition of yoga—yoga chitta vritti nirodha in Sanskrit—is “the cessation of the revolutions of the mind”.
Yoga means union—the recognition of one’s unity with one’s environment and the continuum of life.
Indeed, the ordinary human being is in the position of the fish in the story quoted above. He has fallen from grace into the feedback loop of self-consciousness, and he is quite unable to explore and enjoy the world as he could because he is too aware of his own self. He puts his own end before him, trying to secure his own existence—alas, without realizing that “whoever wants to save his life will lose it.”1
Our attempts to conclusively define reality, ourselves or anything at all is really like trying to hold ourselves up—because for some reason we feel that if we don’t do that, we will fall apart. And like the fish forgot it was floating in the great ocean, we forget that we are floating in the middle of boundless space. There is nowhere to fall!
It is precisely this attempt to catch hold of oneself and the world with the mind—what is symbolized with the fish trying to catch hold of its tail—that is meant with vritti in Sanskrit, and that is ailed with yoga. I can save you the years of effort trying to reach this “liberation” by telling you this simple thing and hoping you’re sharp enough to notice: you are already free.
Do notice that if you try to make the revolutions of your mind end through, say, a yoga practice, you initiate a new set of its revolutions. There is nothing to be done.
Just put your own end behind yourself where it belongs.
Thank you for reading.
How curious it is that the fish is the symbol for Christianity! But it is only the fish who puts his own end behind him who can truly call himself one anointed in Christ.