0:00Thanks for listening to the Tenkara Cast. This is a short cast where we talk for just a few minutes about your favorite subject, Tenkara. This episode is made possible by your purchase of Tenkara USA rods, lines, and flies. Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to this very first short cast. I realized that once in a while I might have an inspiration to talk about a subject, but it's not quite enough to fill a full 25, 30, or one hour episode of the podcast. And in those cases, we are just going to release a shortcast. Today, I wanted to talk about a subject. It's kind of a philosophical subject that I wrote about in our blog a few years ago, back in 2011.
1:02And that's my concept of the karma neutralizer. So I'm not going to get too technical in trying to describe and argue the term karma. I'm going to go and roll with what most of us think in terms of karma, which is essentially what goes around comes around. And what I usually like to think about in terms of karma and fishing, and it's something that I struggle a bit with once in a while, is that I'm out there catching fish all day long for fun. And it does satisfy this really primal instinct that a lot of us have. The idea that we're almost in a hunt and we're kind of trying to see what is hiding below the surface. I mean, there's a lot of things that fishing does for many of us. And it's a huge part of my life, of course. But I cannot say that I don't struggle with that idea. Sometimes I do. It's a little bit hard because, you know, I need it.
2:04I have extreme joy that I get out of fishing. but I do realize that I'm hurting some poor animals and just for fun. Nothing wrong with that. I'm going to justify my own fishing in a lot of different ways. But what I've realized over the years is that I'm doing this to all these fish and if there is such a thing as karma, I'm accumulating a lot of bad karma in a way. And again, I'm not going to get too technical on the exact definitions of what karma is and that kind of thing. But if I'm hurting 10 fish in a day and I'm kind of hooking them, I'm accumulating all this karma. And what I've realized over the years is that I kind of like it when I go fishing and I have some small kind of incident to help neutralize my bad karma, if you will. So if I go out fishing and I slip on a rock and I get a scratch on my leg or maybe I'm walking on a trail and I kind of, you know, cut myself a little bit or I hook myself on the finger. By the way, I always use barbless hooks because I don't want to neutralize my karma that much. But I kind of feel good about that. And it might be kind of a weird concept, but I figure if I'm getting a little bit of a, you know, hurt just a little bit, not on purpose, of course, but if something's happening to me, it is neutralizing my kind of bad karma that day. And it's not letting it accumulate over years and then getting all big payback at one time. Again, it's going to be a weird concept, but we got a lot of good comments on that blog post, the karma neutralizer post that I wrote in 2011. And once in a while, I'll bring it up with a friend and I'll talk about my idea.
3:59Like when I take somebody fishing and they slip and they get hurt, I tell them, hey, it's like, hey, that's a really good thing. You just got a little bit of a karma neutralizer, you know, because you're hurting some fish and now you can live a worry-free life not thinking that this is all going to come back at once years down the road. And people really like that concept. So I thought I would share that with you. Next time you go fishing, if something happens to you, you can think of it as a karma neutralizer. And what I like about it is that it makes me feel much better about small injuries. And I wear those little bruises and scratches as a nice little reminder that maybe today I was kind of even. Another way, by the way, it doesn't always mean to get hurt. I don't want to give the impression that getting hurt is the best thing in the world. there are other things that you can do actively i think to neutralize the bad karma that comes from hurting a poor a bunch of poor little fish and one way that i also like to think about neutralizing bad karma if you will is to actively pick up trash no matter where you go there's always going to be trash around and i've been to some places that i thought were really really remote and people have been there before and I'll always find some kind of trash. So I always like to pick it up and bring it back out with me and throw it in a garbage can later on. And that's a really easy way to kind of neutralize any karmic effects from your fishing activity. Plus with Tenkara, you know, we're not carrying a whole lot of stuff anyways. It's just a rod, line, fly. You're carrying five, six ounces worth of gear, why not use the freed up space to carry some trash out next time you go fishing? Neutralize the karma. It's a win-win-win situation. Everybody wins a little bit. Pick up some water bottles, bags, and Cheetos bags, and whatever you can find, and take them out of the stream. So you can have, I suppose we can say that you have the passive karma neutralizer, which is something just happens to you, but maybe you can prevent those by having the active karma neutralizer, which is when you actively do something good for nature, like picking up trash. In the post that I wrote in 2011, I actually talk about saving a bird.
6:26I had been fishing out in Yellowstone National Park, and I'm going upstream, and I go around a bend on a river, and all of a sudden I see this bird kind of like fluttering in the air, but it was looking really kind of weird. And I get a little bit closer, and I realize that the bird was actually trapped by a fishing line. Essentially, somebody had a two-fly rig, two nymphs, as a matter of fact, and they got caught on a branch. The person lost the fly with the rig. And this poor bird, what it looked like had happened, is he saw one little nymph dangling, and he thought it was food. So he actually went there with his beak, because one of the flies was trapped inside of his beak as if he tried to eat it. And then there was a bunch of just probably about two feet of tippet to the other fly, and a bunch of it was wrapped around the tree. So he had some of the line wrapped around his foot, and then the fly was caught on the other one. In any case, I was walking, I was catching plenty of fish that day, and I saw that poor bird, and I have some great pictures on that post.
7:33If you look up karma neutralizer on the web, you'll find that post is one of the first ones that come up. But I was able to extend my rod up above this branch with my line on the other side of it. And using the Tenkara rod, I just pulled the branch down so that I could actually reach the poor bird. And I was able to free him. and I thought that was one of the best ways to kind of neutralize all the karma that I had accumulated that day by catching a lot of brown trout on the river. So that's just something that I wanted to share with you today. Just a little something, a little food for thought if you will. If you get hurt a little bit or if you have an opportunity to pick up trash, do so because it will help you prevent getting caught up with bad karma in the long term. So share your thoughts with us on tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. If you think that the karma neutralizer concept is something that's going to take off or if I'm just full of it, I kind of like to think that there's something to it.
8:41But until next time on the Tenkara Cast, and we'll see what the next short cast is going hold for us. Thanks for listening. guitar solo No, she don't disturb a thing, leaves it just like when she came The salmon leaps so high, trying to get to the source But he doesn't need a roadmap to choose his own course Unlike the flame, ashes don't distinguish what remains All that was extinguished like a flame Burns up everything all the same The wake of destruction is in the game Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh You know the rules just don't apply When you're using loaded dice Well, the road to shortcomings is paved With oversights and there's a name That often goes unspoken but the shame Is when we don't acknowledge who's to blame For each and every action there's a way To realize who's hurting That was a little piece of the song Light the Flame by Takenobu.
10:38You can check out his music at takenobumusic.com
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
