Many amazing stories of survival came out of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. One of them is how kindness saved a Sri Lankan man's life.
The man would go to the edge of a lagoon, connected to the ocean, every morning to feed the fish with a loaf of sliced bread. One morning, a big crocodile appeared. Sri Lankan crocodiles are very dangerous. They are known to eat people. Unfrightened, the kind man threw a few slices of bread to the crocodile. The croc snapped them up and swam away.
From that day on, the crocodile would come every morning for his breakfast of sliced bread, and swim away peacefully afterwards.
The man was feeding the fish the morning the Tsunami came. Being close to the edge of the water, he was swept up in the strong currents and carried out to sea. At first, he tried to hold on to a wooden chair, but the forces of the Tsunami were so strong that they tore the chair from his grasp. Then he grabbed on to another piece of wood and that too was pulled away from him. Close to drowning, he grabbed on to a log of wood that was floating close to him. He managed to hold on to that and grab some air.
Coming back to his senses, he began to notice something very odd. Whereas every other object was being dragged by the current out to sea, his log was moving in the opposite direction back to the shore. When he was close enough to dry land, the man jumped off the log and scrambled up the bank to safety. Only then did he notice that his "log" had a tail. It was the crocodile.
Cynics say that the crocodile only saved the man so he could get some more bread the next morning! But the wise know that the crocodile was only repaying many acts of kindness with his own act of compassion.
(From the book "Good? Bad? Who Knows?" by Ajahn Brahm)
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