Tipping the Scales in Favor of Kindness

My pal Mark Morocco and I were going fishing one day when he introduced me to the owners of a bait shop in the Marina del Rey harbor.

“How’s business?” I asked one of the two.

“We’re surviving,” he said. “Thanks to the Buddhists.”

I said I wasn’t aware that Buddhists were big fishermen, and he said they don’t fish at all. They buy the bait and set it free.

Good karma.

This could be why the Catholic Church has had so much trouble lately. Growing up, we made a point of eating fish every Friday instead of releasing it.

The bait shop boys said sometimes Buddhists arrive by caravan and clean out their entire stock, spending as much as a couple thousand dollars.

They promised to call me the next time Buddhists showed up, but they didn’t follow through and didn’t return my calls, either. I started going through the Yellow Pages, calling Buddhist temples at random, but nobody knew anything about any bait release.

It could be tough finding the right group, said my colleague, religion writer Teresa Watanabe. All 100 Buddhist sects in the world are represented in Los Angeles, naturally, and they tend to be pretty splintered.

Watanabe suggested calling Rev. Noriaki Ito at the Higashi Honganji Temple in Little Tokyo.

“They’re not Japanese,” Rev. Ito told me, “because if they were Japanese, I would know about it. They might be Vietnamese.”

I made a few more calls but kept striking out, and was about to give up. In a last gasp, I went to Google on the Internet, typed in the words Buddhist, bait, and Marina del Rey, and got a hit.

It was a newsletter on the www.santamonicakksg.org website. I printed out the nine-page report from the Karma Kagyu Study Group, which is affiliated with a Tibetan lama who lives in New York. On the very last page was the heading “Liberation of Beings.”

It said that once a month, the Buddhist study group meets at a Santa Monica pet shop to purchase and release insects, or at a bait shop in Marina del Rey to release fish.

Daniel Kane, one of the group leaders, invited me to attend last Sunday’s fish release at the Marina del Rey Sportfishing bait shop, across the harbor from the bait shop that never called me back. Before the ceremony, I called owner Rick Oefinger, who said he’s been selling bait to various Buddhists sects for years.

“We charge Buddhists half-price, because they usually buy in volume,” said Oefinger. He remembers the day a large group bought nearly $5,000 worth of bait and dumped it into the harbor.

He said he never sells Buddhists all his bait, because he has to save some for his regular customers.

“I was born and raised Catholic,” said Oefinger, who is often handed reading materials by his Buddhist customers, including a lone woman who comes once a month and sets $50 worth of bait free. “But I respect all religion, and I’d just like to thank the Buddhists for their business.”

Kane, of the Santa Monica Tibetan group, arranged for a high lama to officiate at last Sunday’s fish release ceremony.

Venerable Wanchen Rinpoche, of the Maha Vajra Center in Hancock Park, led five monks wearing deep purple robes as they clasped hands in prayer and chanted over a bait pool next to a “Live Squid” sign.

Thirty-five followers joined in the chant -- om mani peme hung, the mantra of compassion.

They bowed heads and fingered prayer beads as thousands of sardines and anchovies added their own energy to the ceremony, swimming furiously in the bait pool.

No fewer than $1,000 worth of them would soon be free, if only to face new perils.

After several minutes of prayer, the lama gave the word and his followers took turns dipping long-handled nets into the well. They grabbed hundreds of the tiny fish in each scoop, and released them into the harbor, the fish scattering in all directions.

There were smiles all around, as Buddhists basked in the glow of good karma on a blissfully warm January afternoon.

“The real purpose is not just giving life,” the high lama told me, “but to establish an enlightened connection to animals and all living beings.”

We could be reincarnated as bait fish, and the bait could be reincarnated as humans, the lama continued.

I suppose he could be right. But I’m stressed out enough about paying the mortgage to worry that in the next life, I could end up as bait, or perhaps a pizza topping.

And for some people, fish is food, and bait is how you catch it.

When I noticed two guys nearby, fishing off the end of the pier, I asked the lama what he thought of it.

“With all due respect, I think it’s ignorant,” he said, explaining once again that all living things are sacred.

So I asked if he was a vegetarian.

“I accept meat,” he said, much to my surprise.

With all due respect, I said to the Venerable Rinpoche, “isn’t that ignorant?”

He didn’t have much of an answer for that, except to suggest we’re all weaker than we’d like to admit.

Not to play devil’s advocate, but it did cross my mind that those liberated sardines and anchovies would now be free to get eaten by bigger fish, or to indiscriminately attack and kill plankton, the staff of life for so many fish.

You’d like to think a single act of kindness can change the world forever. But can we control our own destiny, I wondered, let alone anyone else’s?

I decided to go see what the two fishermen had to say. A man named Andy smiled as he tinkered with his fishing pole, looking over his shoulder in the direction of the high lama.

“When they release all this bait, it attracts bigger fish,” he said, explaining that, out of respect, he usually waits for the crowd to disperse before baiting up to go after some serious lunkers.

“Halibut, sea bass, barracuda. It’s always good fishing after the Buddhists leave.”

Two kids who had attended the ceremony with their parents weren’t about to let the fishermen get to them.

“It just makes you feel good about yourself to set something free,” said 10-year-old Gabriel Greenland of Brentwood.

It’s about getting a second chance, said Allegra, his 12-year-old sister.

“If I get captured,” she added, “I hope Buddhists set me free.”

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes

.com.