BEEN A FISH

Sunday, April 14th, 2025

Durban, South Africa

Some creatures, like fish, take so well to water. That is so evident when I walk by the moat which is surrounding the temple in Chatsworth, a suburb of Durban. I have been coming to South Africa since the year 2000 with a break during the pandemic, and have been accommodated and treated so well. My stay is sweet, and I received just the finest prasadam.

In my early days of coming, I would venture off the property to the Gandhi Park nearby and beyond, but being unsafe, I decided to resort to just staying on the temple grounds, especially for chanting my rounds on the beads for meditation. That clockwise directional walk is my routine. In the moat next to me, these beautiful koi fish swim. They love their water. I noticed one floating on the surface, dead. Perhaps he was old. The companions swam to him one by one, and let it be, yet one who reached me, touched him and with his bite, yanked him down to the bottom, not to come up again. It is known that koi are not natural predators but can be opportunistic scavengers.

I do know that they love feeding time.  When these fish are fed their nuggets, they just go in frenzy mode. At that, I can truly relate to them and am convinced that I was a fish in a previous life. I similarly get excited at prasadam time.  But that's behind me, and when the weather turned wet today, very wet, with rain, I truly believed in moving on, not with the stroke of a swim, but the swing of the legs. I once was a fish, but I am not now. I can spend the rest of my years pursuing the spirit while God is always keeping an eye on the fishbowl.

MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU!

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