Tales of two fishermen

A man was sitting on the bank of a stream, all alone, fishing. It was getting late and still he had caught no fish. After a while the float on his line began to move. Now and then its tip touched the water. The fisherman was holding the line tight in his hands, ready to pull it up, when somebody came walking by, on the road above the banks of the stream. "Sir," the traveller said to the fisherman, "can you tell me where the Lettermans live? It's somewhere around here..."

There was no reply from the fisherman, because he was just on the verge of pulling up his rod.
There seemed to be business at the end of the line. Again and again the traveller said, in a louder voice, "Sir, can you tell me where the Lettermans live?" But the man fishing in the stream was unconscious of everything around him. His hands were trembling, his eyes fixed on the float, the picture of a fine fish about to come up, vivid in his mind. "This man must be stone deaf," said the traveller to himself, very much annoyed, and so he started walking on the road again.

After he had gone quite a way, it happened that the fisherman's float sank under the water and with one pull of the rod he landed a good sized fish. Wiping the sweat from, his brow (it was a hot day) he now turned and shouted after the visitor. "Hey!" he said. "Come here! Listen! But the man would not even turn his face. After much shouting, however, he did come back. He said to the fisherman, "Why are you shouting at me?"

"What did you ask me about?" said the fisherman.

"Why, I repeated my question so many times and here you are, asking me to repeat it again!" The fisherman replied: "At that time a fish was after my bait, so I didn't hear a word of what you said."

Sri Ramakrishna tells us that this is the kind of single-mindedness we must have in meditation; we must become completely absorbed.

Read the Second Story-Tales of Two FisherMan