At the appointed time, the benefactors have set the alms-meal on the table at the refectory. The meal consists of four vegetables, rice, fruits and dessert sweets. Once the benefactors have left, you would hear a voice thus:

“There’s nothing spicy. How about we fry some sprats?”

The storage-kuṭī of sanctioned items will contain dried food to be used conforming to Vinaya.

Simply because you are a novice-monk, you’ll be assigned the task of cleaning the sprats. Do not resent it. Do not avoid it. Face the challenge. Perhaps you might even be a vegetarian. Still, don’t be concerned about that. Think that each sprat of which you break off the head will have been your mother, father, relative and child throughout saŋsāra―the round of rebirths. Behold that this same sprat, throughout the round of rebirths, will have been a universal monarch, a deva and a peta-ghost.[i]  Behold that it will have also been your own kalyāna-mitta. Reflect by relating this to every human being and every animal. Think that this sprat will have also been an ordained monk in saŋsāra. Think as to how and why, even after having been ordained as a monk, it became a sprat again. Be skilful to reflect that throughout the round of rebirths this sprat will have borne even arahats from its own womb.

For this insightful understanding you gain, from the bottom of your heart pass on merit to the sprat as well. Look what depth and profundity there is in a subject of meditation (kammaṭṭhāna) you got out of a mere sprat.

Well, had you resented saying “I can’t be handling sprats. I’m a vegetarian” or left the forest hermitage in protest, then would you get this subject of meditation?

You needn’t be in a hurry to notice whether there is a being or a person in the sprat, not just yet. First, make use of the meditation-subject you got. See the depth of the saŋsāra. Let fear arise in you about saŋsāra. Through such cultivation, when your penetrative insight (vipassanā) heightens, insight-knowledge will [inevitably] arise in you that ‘there is no being or person in the sprat but merely the constituent elements that are subject to impermanence’.[ii] If this knowledge does not arise in you, then, be patient. As paññā ripens, the insight-knowledge of this phenomenon will dawn on you.

Reflect that as you are acquiring an insight-knowledge thus, those who are tasting the fried sprats get nothing but tanhā for taste. Be skilful to notice that, although one may be clergy or laity in this life, the possibility is ever-present of him becoming a sprat again in the round of rebirths.

Be adept never to take up residence in a mother’s womb or an egg again in saŋsāra. Or else, someday this very sprat, being born as a human, when you are born as a sprat, will fry you too in this same manner. In this life, don’t do the same thing this sprat has done in a previous birth as a monk. By boasting that you are vegetarian, by despising that the other person eats meat, by providing the tongue with every single taste it asks for (by succumbing to the desire for taste), what accumulates is nothing but tanhā. All you must do is to behold as impermanent the mind that arose asking for taste.

[i] ‘Peta-ghost’ is an unhappy ghost or a greedy ghost wandering in vain, hopelessly in search of sensuous fulfilment. Peta-ghost realm is one of the fourfold-hell.

[ii] See anatta.