Fish-Eat-Fish World (extract)

"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."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Fish-Eat-Fish World"

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