Generosity Story

Story title: Generosity
By: Edmund Fuller

   This story is about an earthquake in China. When it happened, a farmer was standing on a hilltop surrounded by his rice fields. Suddenly he saw the ocean rush away from the shore like some large animal crouching for a leap. He knew that leap would be a devastating tidal wave.
   He saw his neighbors working in the low rice fields, and when that tidal wave came back, they would all be swept away by its force. Somehow he had to call them to the safety of his hill.

So without thinking twice, he set fire to his straw stack and furiously rang the temple bell. His farmer neighbors thought his farm was on fire and rushed up the hill to help him. They had hardly reached the top, when they heard and saw the swirling wall of water swish through the field they had just left.
   Then it was that they realized how the farmer had saved their lives. From that day on, they went to the temple to pray for their neigbhor to whose generosity they owed their lives.