Hi friends, I recently had the chance to watch a young man fish for carp in the Potomac River. He was an expert angler, using a mix of panko breadcrumbs, strawberry Jell-O powder, and corn kernels as bait. He had three lines out at once, and after maybe 30 to 45 minutes, there were three fish tugging at the lines at the same time. He started reeling one in, using considerable strength to wrangle the fish and wear it out, while trying to explain to everyone else how to pull in the others. “How much tension is on the line?” “He’s a big one! We’ve gotta wear him out.” “Can you feel him?” “Get it! Get it! Get it!” The kids were squealing, cheering, and tugging on the rods. Two of the carp got away, but he pulled in the one on his line. It was tremendous, about 30 inches and 15 pounds, with shiny gold and black patterns across its slick body. Seeing this beautiful animal up close, my daughter, who’d helped reel it in, became quite concerned. She pleaded with the fisherman to take the hook out of its mouth and let it back into the water before it suffocated. And when he did, we all relaxed. This week’s talk is about the deepest levels of release the practice has to offer. For years, the goal of my meditation practice was to learn to cool off the anger in my mind and heart. Now that the anger has quieted down significantly, I find myself asking, “What is the benefit of continuing on this path?” Once we’ve stabilized our minds and no longer act out in destructive ways, the path offers a different kind of transformation: the chance to find freedom by releasing the big fish. These are the ideas of who we thought we needed to be in order to feel proud of our lives, the jobs we thought we had to have, the rewards we thought we had to hold, the families we imagined we would build in a certain way. The Buddhist path offers us a chance to release our clinging to these identities and outcomes, and in that release to find a great peace and a quiet fearlessness, neither grabbing for more out of life nor afraid of it slipping away. This talk was given at the Riverside Meditation Community, Brookmont Church, on Sunday, October 18, 2026. It follows a five-part series on the Meghiya Sutta’s conditions for the release of the heart. Question for the week: What have you been pursuing your whole life, what big fish have you been trying to reel in, that would be scary to let swim away? Texts & references Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11): defines the end of suffering as letting go of craving (paṭinissagga). https://suttacentral.net/sn56.11Sāmaññaphala Sutta (DN 2): the bliss of blamelessness. https://suttacentral.net/dn2Baḷisika Sutta (SN 35.230): the Buddha’s fishing simile, in which we are the fish on Māra’s hook. https://suttacentral.net/sn35.230Carol Wilson, teacher at the Insight Meditation Society: the “secret hope for pleasure” teaching.Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
