Fishing in the field of truth

A brief reflection on a day trip in Scotland

“On the field of truth, on the battlefield of life. What came to pass, Sanjaya?

This line comes from the opening verse of The Bhagavad Gita, in the Penguin Class edition translated by Juan Mascaro.

Yesterday I heard these words for the first time, soon after a few tiny drops of whisky were offered to an open fire alongside names to be thanked, in each case eliciting bursts of flame as part of an extempore closing ritual. A few moments later I heard them again from behind a tree on a hilltop in a booming and playful voice that was comical but also serious, and memorable. And this morning there they were in my head, perhaps the best earworm I’ve ever had.

On the field of truth, on the battlefield of life. What came to pass, Sanjaya?

The context was a fishing trip with Alastair McIntosh. For those who don’t know Alastair, he is the author of several books including most recently Riders on the Storm: The Climate Crisis and the survival of Being. He’s also an activist, and, I would say, a spiritual teacher, though he teaches mostly by the inspiration of his lived example and in the generosity of his time and expertise, rather than through doctrine. (And he does wonderful ‘Thought for the day’ slots for Radio Scotland). His biography gives you a more detailed idea of his formative influences, and they include a deep and visceral connection to land and sea, an awareness of what he calls “shuffling poverty” (people who start to shuffle rather than walk, due to morbidity issues arising from the context of poverty) a warmth and openness toward people, a sharp and well-trained intellect, the will and capacity to challenge power with love, a mischievous sense of humour, including the fabled twinkle in the eye, and a love for all things ‘trippy’. I find him a thoroughly admirable human being, and great company.

In his book (with Matt Carmichael) Spiritual Activism Alastair reflects on the opening line of the Gita as being an invocation of layers of context. My interpretation of what is written there is that ‘the field of truth’ is cosmic dharma, which has elements of logos -the ordering principle of realty, mythos - deep archetypal stories about who we are, pathos - the tragedy and violence inherent in life’s mattering, and eros - deep contact with the creative pulse of reality. ‘The battlefield of life’ is more like meaning within the human lifespan and our personal struggle to live a good life, and then ‘what came to pass’ is all of the events, including the gift of being taught how to fish and invited out on a fishing trip. Sanjaya is a spiritual visionary, guiding a political leader who is literally and figuratively blind in the absence of such vision - we lack such vision today. Alastair compared these opening lines to Jesus saying “I am the way, the truth, and the life”, and while there may be no direct mapping there is that same sense of life as an interplay of fractals of context and meaning.

I have known Alastair mostly through networks on Twitter. We share an interest in Scotland’s political future, a range of psychological and spiritual questions, the climate conundrum, and the relationship between these things. We met for the first time at last year’s Realisation Festival, where Alastair gave the opening presentation in what was one of the best public talks I’ve witnessed. The video version does not carry the energy in the room at the time, but it’s still very good. I recently interviewed him for some research Perspectiva is doing into the idea of ‘visionaries’ and we’ll share that video before long, but in the process, he became aware that I would be in the west of Scotland for two weeks with my sons, and he offered to take us all fishing.

I didn’t hesitate.

When I shared this photograph from yesterday’s excursion to Gourack with my friend Mark Vernon, he quipped that he hoped we had brought ‘the five loaves’, which is a reference to the gospel of Matthew 14:17, in which Jesus feeds everyone present with the available food. In fact, we ended up catching about twenty-five mackerel in total. We were joined by friends Michael and Kylen, and the six of us ate nine fish on a fire that we made up from driftwood. The taste arising from sea-to-fire-to-mouth was so good that I yelped in delight. And we didn’t use the loaves we had taken, because we didn’t want anything to get in the way of the taste of the fish. We took the rest home for others, and for later. And it did all feel a little biblical.

Alastair offered the invitation mostly for my sons Kailash(14) and Vishnu(7). He said he’s keen for young people to better understand where food comes from, which is palpable in the following clip where Alastair is teaching me how to gut the fish when I get back to shore (so he could take the others out) and Vishnu watches on in a kind of horrified delight.

The focus on catching fish for dinner gave us all a shared sense of immediate purpose in the sense of ‘what came to pass’ that day. But the experience was also part of ‘the battlefield of life’ in the sense of drawing attention to the kind of perennial activity that calls into question where we are historically, and ecologically. The American poet Thoreau famously said that most men go fishing all their lives without realising that it’s not fish they are after. The search for fish as a proxy, sometimes for peace, sometimes patience, sometimes for nature, sometimes for a different kind of company.

And then there is the field of truth, or dharma, the small matter of what it’s all about. Alastair is a Quaker and a Christian, but also one of these post-religious rishis who value spiritual life in all its best forms. He knows that my wife Siva is Indian and that I have an Indian name - Vivekananda - and he said he wanted to connect to the spiritual roots of our children by speaking the words of the Gita. And those words felt timely, because they arose from what came to pass (we mastered the elements and caught some fish together), from the battlefield of life (we all had time to reflect on nature, on friendship, on inter-generational transmission, on water, and on fire). And so when Alastair spoke about the field of truth, by quoting from the Gita, I felt he also spoke from it.

It was a precious and memorable day.