The Fish That Refuses the Shore
Bala Kanda, Doha 22
Doha 22 · Movement 2 of 2
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A clear lake lies under the open sky, filled not with ordinary water but with the nectar of love for the Name. The desireless devotees of Ram enter without searching its banks for reward. They have not come to bargain for heaven, power, or release.
Their minds become fish in that sweetness. A fish does not visit water as a pilgrim visits a shrine. Water is its element, its movement, its shelter, and its life. Taken from the lake, it cannot be consoled by jewels.
So remembrance ceases to be an act performed at intervals. The mind lives in the Name and knows no shore outside it.
The mind turns once beneath the nectar and never asks to leave.
Read the passage from the Manas
AI-created devotional illustration · Doha 22
A single fish swims in a luminous lotus pool, symbolizing the mind immersed in loving remembrance.
Source reference and artistic choices
Gita Press code81 undated · PDF pages 46 · printed pages 44. Reader passage: bala-kanda-doha-023. Printed numbering may differ.
Source facts
- Desire-free devotees immersed in Rama devotion make their minds fish in the nectar-lake of supreme love for the Name
Artistic choices
- Ordinary fish in water selects the mind/lake comparison; no literal transformation or nectar claim
- Fish design, pool, lotus, leaves, stones, light and floral frame imagined
An imaginative interpretation, not a historical portrait or documentary evidence.
सकल कामना हीन जे राम भगति रस लीन। नाम सुप्रेम पियूष हद तिन्हहुँ किए मन मीन।।22।।
Even those who are free from all desires and steeped in the rasa of Ram-bhakti. Even they have made their minds into fish swimming in the ocean of the Name's loving nectar.