The Unfishermen

The fish bangs its head against the wooden banister on the fishing boat’s starboard side before gracelessly tumbling back-first into the motor’s churning wake. Like the dozens of others, he falls with the pathetic clumsiness only living things can manage. I can’t help but wince as it slaps the white surf.

At my side are rows and rows of large plastic tanks, and in them writhe dozens of live fish. I’m one of six people, each with their own section of the fishing boat, pulling bucketfuls of fish to pitch back into the sea off the coast of Northern Taiwan. Next to me, another foreigner dumps her bucket of fish overboard and mutters, “I dedicate all merit from his to the Master, so that he can live long and healthy and continue to teach the dharma.” I was told that I must say this, but that if I wanted to add anything personal for the fish’s coming life, words of encouragement, that was fine, too.

The two-hour ceremony on the cliffs, now faint and grey behind the other fishing boats that follow in our train, had rewritten the fish’s karma, balanced the heavy weight that had kept them in a low-level of existence - the life of animals, which is all fear and hunger. I plunge the bucket and scoop up two big fish - muttering through clenched teeth, arms exhausted from dozens of loads, I struggle to raise the bucket. What wisdom have I for brethren souls still locked in darkness? “I dedicate all merit from this to the Ma-aster, so that he can live lo-ong and healthy and continue to teach the d-dharma. In your next life, be considerate lovers. Don’t be selfishhhh…” and the bucket pitched as the fish began their decent into the light.

The practice, which could be translated as Saving Souls if you had a Christian bent, is best rendered as Releasing Life. Buddhist cultures all over the world engage in this custom, buying up animals from restaurants where they are soon to be slaughtered and served to release into the wild, sanctified, ready for the next life, when they too will study Buddhism and release the lives of lesser beings, gifting upon their unwitting animal heads the truth they can only begin to understand somewhere in their myriad lives to come. For now, though, they are dumb, dead weight, currency for the merit economy.

The ceremony that brought them here, to the deck of a boat, had been impressive: four massive and specially equipped tanker trucks teeming with the living cargo, a dozen tour buses, a stage and even a pair of portable toilets were all neatly arraigned on the gravel cliffs, wide and flat enough to host such a party. If this sounds expensive, it is. Some fish were donated by restaurants happy to trade the stock of one day for a does of merit (what we call ‘good karma’) but most had to be purchased. Then there were the truck, boat, and bus rentals - not to mention all the equipment. This was all paid for by donations from thousands of true believers all across the island - a larger collection of same group that funded Master Wang’s Tea House meditation center, as well as his life and work. For every dollar spent, of course, came matching merit, like carbon credits for your coming lives.

For an hour we’d milled around the hot cliffs as the sailors stood smoking with their fishing boats moored in a small harbor below. There were twenty or so selected foreigners from the Sunday night practice, each having been specially picked by the Master, who’d joined a larger group of Taiwanese adherents to pile into a tour bus and make the trip along Taiwan’s beautiful northern coast. Those outside the inner circle, who hadn’t been invited personally by Master Wang, had been notified in sudden phone calls, or confidential sideline conversations, that only a few people could come, and so as not to damage the other foreigner’s fragile feelings, we couldn’t tell them.

When the tour bus would drop us all off near the tea house after the long drive back from the coast, we would stand around again with our hands in our pockets as one at a time we made our way to the Tea House. Going in as a large group, we would be told, raises suspicions. This was normal, however, as exclusive messages for one were constantly passing through the tearoom on dashing, socked feet, creeping whispers you were always only mostly unaware of. Ironically, the operations of an enlightenment-seeking organization seemed to hinge on winking ignorance into the eyes of curious near-believers, always for their own good.

Further out behind my boat, a disorganized group of other fishing boats maintain a respectful distance - when all of our tanks have been emptied, and we’ve turned back towards the rocky cliffs, they will overtake us to fish the waters we just seeded. My arms are heavy and tired, slick with the scum the teeming fish have whipped their tanks of water into. I struggle to balance my bucket on the banister. “I dedicate this merit to the Mas-” I begin but the boat tosses, and the bucket pitches its own contents shoddily into the sea. I look down to watch a fish glance of the side of the boat before hitting the water. Do I lose merit if I kill one?

Cargo spent, we turn and the real fishermen overtake us, casting out their nets. Most of the fish we freed will be caught and eaten within a week. The sooner they die though, I’m told, the better. The sooner they give up this pointless life, the sooner they can be reborn to seek the dharma, and that was the real point - not some momentary kindness to mindless fish.

I think about the return to Taipei, and the Tea House qigong workshop tonight. When I see the others, I know I’ll feel bad about having had the chance to go, and about having to keep it secret. It feels strange to have to lie. After all, we’re all good people.