Here is the story of a little kingdom and its good king, who triumphs over a series of dark forces [kingdom.pdf]. It was sent to me by one New Mandala reader, who said it is his favourite bedtime story. Bedtime stories are popular in my house so I read it to my children. This was their favourite section. It details one of the king’s triumphs in his many travels around the kingdom.
In a far off place, the king came across a village that had almost no one living there. “Where has everyone gone” the king asked the small group of remaining villagers.
The villagers answered their king: “A demon of the dark called “GREED” came and visited and asked the people to leave the village. Most of the villagers abandoned the village and went to live in the “City of Extravagance”. [Hey dad, look at all those silly villagers just marching off when the demon told them to. Are they populists?]
The king thought for a moment and then gave the villagers a radiant seed. The villagers took the seed and planted it and it grew into the “radiant tree” that grew large branches and spread its radiance in all directions. [Hey dad, look at those big tree roots. They help store the water.]
The king told the villagers that the “radiant tree” is called “SUFFICIENCY.” The radiance of the tree shone to far off places, as far as the City of Extravagance. And many of those who saw it travelled back to return to their village. [Hey dad, why didn’t the villagers just send them an SMS?]
Of course, being a good teacher, I had to explain that this is a fairy story and no one would take it seriously in real life.
[Hey dad, that doesn’t matter. We love fairy stories. Tomorrow can we have the draft constitution?]
8 responses so far ↓
1 Srithanonchai // May 4, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Before you give them the draft constitution, please check with the Thai original whether the sections you select for reading are correctly translated.
2 Pig Latin // May 4, 2007 at 11:35 pm
…the king came across a village that had almost no one living there.
The Sufficiency Village?! :O
3 Srithanonchai // May 5, 2007 at 2:09 am
Maybe, I take this sort of ideological dirt too seriously, but to me it is seriously nauseating, and completely irresponsible.
4 Jon Fernquest // May 5, 2007 at 3:38 pm
IMHO Rather have junior reading this book than smashing bottles at the local pub, getting girls pregnant, and experimenting with yaa baa.
Good parents shelter their kids in Thailand, until they get to a western country for their overseas educational and English fluency building experience, that is, but by that time they are probably ready to handle it.
BTW sometimes these overseas study jaunts go wildly wrong. I met one poor misguided Burmese kid being sheltered, looked after, and nursed back to sanity, by his compatriots at one of the Burmese merchant marine haunts around town (Bangkok).
The kid was in a pub in Australia, when a redneck (every country has them) gave him a hard time about being Asian. He just stuck his head down, swallowed his pride, and left, but….he came back the next day and burnt a random car parked in back of the pub. Was finally kicked out of Australia after participating in a demonstration that damaged the Burmese embassy in Canberra. Burma is a tragedy, agreed.
5 Srithanonchai // May 5, 2007 at 6:29 pm
“IMHO Rather have junior reading this book than smashing bottles at the local pub, getting girls pregnant, and experimenting with yaa baa.” >> Is there only the alternative of reading this book or being deviant? Seems to be too narrow to be.
6 Zheng Chao // May 6, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Did anyone actually download and read the text in its entirety? It’s one thing to present a simplified worldview to children, but honestly, this is ridiculous…especially the initial pages.
7 New Mandala » "Rural no more" // Jun 28, 2007 at 4:32 pm
[...] last month I wrote about a Thai fairy tale in which a wise king encourages rural people to return from the city by granting their village the [...]
8 Leif Jonsson // Jun 10, 2008 at 7:06 am
Thanks for posting this, it is a splash (complete with yellow fever). The family state of wise father need not be dragged into contentions over the monarchy. I think the problem is much more pervasive. There is lots of stuff in Heather Montgomery’s Modern Babylon that deals with the idea of children, in Thailand and elsewhere. The book mentions a speech on National Children’s Day by then PM Chuan Leekpai. He “claimed that childhood was the most perfect state to be in because it was the only time in a person’s life when they were really free. No mention was made of the powerlessness of childhood, of the weak and vulnerable state that until now many people had viewed it to be. Indeed, his speech can be seen as celebrating that impotence and implying that freedom can only come with powerlessness which has obvious parallels to the role of the citizen” (2001:63). Sufficiency may be a condition akin to childhood in that sense. And all good things come from above.
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