The Distinction Between Fish and Fishing

Giving a person a fish is not as good as teaching them how to fish. What does the fish represent? What does fishing represent? The fish represents the fruit, while fishing represents the method of obtaining the fruit. If you give a person a fish, once the fish is gone, it's gone. If you teach a person how to fish, they master the fundamental skill and can obtain endless fruit, ensuring their sustenance and clothing without worry in the future.

Fishing represents the Three Non-Leaking Studies of precepts, meditation, and wisdom. Through upholding precepts, through cultivating meditation, through observational practice and investigation, and through contemplation, one attains the wisdom of liberation. The initial wisdom is learned wisdom, acquired through study. Ultimately, there is attained wisdom, the wisdom developed after observational practice and investigation, the wisdom drawn from the depths of one's heart, belonging solely to oneself, impossible for anyone to take away. Learned wisdom, however, dissipates like smoke after dim confusion and death, vanishing without a trace.

Without the initial upholding of precepts, there will be no subsequent meditation. Without meditation, there will be no observational wisdom. Without observational wisdom, one cannot obtain the wisdom fish.