The Difference Between Fish and Fishing

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. What does the fish represent? What does fishing represent? The fish is the fruit, while fishing is the method of obtaining the fruit. If you give someone a fish, once the fish is eaten, it is over. If you teach someone to fish, they have mastered the fundamental skill and can obtain endless fruit, free from worry about food and clothing in the future.

Fishing is the three undefiled studies of precepts, meditation, and wisdom. Through upholding the precepts, through cultivating meditation, through contemplative practice (vipaśyanā-caryā) and investigation, through deliberation, one obtains the wisdom of liberation. The initial wisdom is learned wisdom—wisdom gained through study. The final wisdom is realized wisdom—the wisdom developed after contemplative practice and investigation, wisdom drawn out from the depths of one's own mind, belonging to oneself alone, which no one can ever take away. Learned wisdom, however, will vanish into smoke after death in dim obscurity, leaving no trace.

Without the upholding of precepts at the beginning, there can be no meditative concentration in the middle; without meditative concentration, there is no wisdom of contemplative practice; without the wisdom of contemplative practice, one cannot obtain the fish of wisdom.