Text 19
jihvayāti-pramāthinyā
jano rasa-vimohitaḥ
mṛtyum ṛcchaty asad-buddhir
mīnas tu baḍiśair yathā
jihvayā — by the tongue; ati-pramāthinyā — which is extremely disturbing; janaḥ — a person; rasa-vimohitaḥ — bewildered by attraction to taste; mṛtyum — death; ṛcchati — achieves; asat — useless; buddhiḥ — whose intelligence; mīnaḥ — the fish; tu — indeed; baḍiśaiḥ — by the hooks; yathā — just as.
Just as a fish, incited by the desire to enjoy his tongue, is fatally trapped on the fisherman’s hook, similarly, a foolish person is bewildered by the extremely disturbing urges of the tongue and thus is ruined.
The fisherman places meaty bait on a sharp hook and easily attracts the unintelligent fish, who is greedy to enjoy its tongue. Similarly, people are mad after gratifying their tongues and lose all discrimination in their eating habits. For momentary gratification they construct huge slaughterhouses and kill millions of innocent creatures, and by inflicting such atrocious suffering they prepare a ghastly future for themselves. But even if one eats only the foods authorized in the Vedas, there is still danger. One may eat too sumptuously and then the artificially stuffed belly will create pressure on the sexual organs. Thus one will fall down into the lower modes of nature and commit sinful activities that lead to the death of one’s spiritual life. From the fish one should carefully learn the real dangers involved in gratifying the tongue.