The morning air carries more than just salt and diesel - it holds tension today, as thick as the mist rolling off the harbor. Through my market window, I watch young Matsuda-san argue with his father near their boat. “If we don’t take them, the big trawlers will,” his voice rises with frustration. “At least we’d use them properly, honor them properly.” The spider in her web between my drying racks goes still, as if sensing how some choices vibrate through more than just human worlds.
His father’s response comes quiet but firm as tide: “Then let others carry that karma. We must live with our own souls.” The older man’s hands continue their work of mending nets, each knot tied with the particular attention that speaks of meditation rather than mere repair. His son shifts restlessly, caught between inherited wisdom and modern pressure, between dharma and pragmatism.
The argument isn’t new. I’ve heard versions of it all my life - about the spawning grounds we could raid before others do, about the undersized fish we could take before they’re scooped up by factory ships, about how economic reality doesn’t leave room for ancient courtesy toward the sea. Always the same reasoning: if we don’t take more than we should, someone else will.
“Your grandfather used to say,” old Tanaka-san joins the conversation, his hands moving through his morning net-checking ritual, “that dharma isn’t about what others might do - it’s about what you can’t do and still remain whole.” His fingers find a broken strand, but rather than continuing his work, he lets the net rest in his lap. “Once you know better, you can’t un-know it. Each piece of wisdom adds another layer to your dharma.” I remember the first time I understood this truth. My teacher had shown me how to read a fish’s freshness in its eyes, how to know which ones were ready to become food and which ones needed more time in ice. Later, a customer offered extra money for fish I knew wasn’t ready. “But if you don’t sell it to me, someone else will,” she argued. Yet my hands refused to wrap that fish, my body remembering something my profit-minded brain tried to ignore. Some knowledge, once gained, becomes part of your skeleton.
A young apprentice fisherman pauses near my stall, drawn into the harbor discussion. Yesterday, he spotted a rich fishing ground where tuna were spawning. “The commercial boats will just take them all anyway,” he says, the words carrying more question than certainty. “At least we’d say the proper prayers, treat them with respect.” “Respect isn’t just about how you take,” Matsuda’s father responds, “but about knowing when not to take at all.” His weathered hands ghost through the motion of casting nets, but don’t actually reach for his gear. “Each time we learn something deeper about the sea, it adds another threshold we can’t uncross. That’s dharma - not rules imposed from outside, but bones grown from within.”
The spider in her web catches a small fish fly but releases it - something in its struggle perhaps speaking to her own inner knowing about what can and cannot be done today. Even predators, it seems, carry their own dharma, their own innate understanding of right relationship.
torn nets hold questions while spider frees struggling prey — dharma speaks through bone
(what souls learn here:) truth flows through choices kept Through my market morning, I watch the struggle play out in younger faces - the tension between knowing better and wanting to survive in a world that rarely rewards restraint. A small mackerel catches light in my ice display, its eye still holding the particular clarity that speaks of recent life. My hands know exactly how to fillet it for maximum profit, but they also carry the wisdom of when such profit carries too high a cost to spirit.
“But the big companies don’t care,” Matsuda-san makes one last attempt, his voice carrying the particular pain of someone fighting their own deeper knowing. “They’ll take everything if we don’t take our share.” His father simply continues mending his nets, each knot a kind of prayer. The silence stretches between them until the younger man’s shoulders finally drop, his body remembering what his anxious mind tried to forget - that some lines, once seen, cannot be uncrossed without leaving part of yourself behind.
This is what the industrial fishing operations can never understand - how knowledge brings responsibility, how each piece of wisdom adds another layer to what we can and cannot do with our own souls intact. Their profit calculations leave no room for dharma, no space for the sacred boundaries that grow from relationship rather than regulation.
As evening approaches, I watch Matsuda-san and his father prepare their boat - but not for fishing. Today they’ll patrol the spawning grounds, standing witness against those who haven’t yet learned or have chosen to forget. The spider in her web has moved to higher ground, leaving clear the space where young fish leap in their practice jumps. Some wisdom, it seems, transcends species.
Tonight, after the market closes, I’ll clean my knives with the same attention I use to cut fish - not because anyone would know if I didn’t, but because my hands have learned their own dharma through years of relationship with scales and flesh and bone. Tomorrow will bring new temptations, new justifications for taking more than we should. But true wealth, perhaps, lies not in what we could take, but in what we choose to preserve - both in the sea and in our souls.