Story of Buckets

Recent years, I have encountered 3 versions of the story regarding our Buckets. I have combined 2 of the stories which seem more related to our life and I would like to share here.

There are 2 temples built in the middle the 2 mountains. In order to get daily water supply, 2 monks from 2 different temples had to travel to a river in between of the mountains. Day by day, John and Rick met almost everyday when they were carrying their buckets to get water from the river.

After 3 years, Rick stopped seeing John when he came to the riverside. He started to wonder, “Perhaps John is sick.” One Week pass by, one month pass by, Rick still not seeing John come to the river. Out of curiosity, he decided to pay John a visit. When he reached John’s temple, he saw John was getting the water from the well in the temple.

John explained, “These 3 years, I have been digging the well, and now I finally got the water from the well and save the trip to the river.” Rick felt that it was really a good idea and plan to have his own well too.

For the first month, Rick works on the well with full energy. However, month after month without any sight of water, Rick decided to stop digging and start to save his energy to get some bigger bucket so that he can save some trips to the river. When the temple had more and more monks, he had to carry bigger and bigger buckets. – End –