Suraphon, Pranee, and the Granary Built Too Well

The most dangerous trap is not always the lie: it is often good advice, given one time too many. Suraphon and Pranee learned this firsthand, one day, with a pile of rice to sow standing between them and winter. Their story tells how, in trying too hard to do well, one can end up losing sight of what truly matters.

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A Tale from a Spiritual Asia

The most dangerous trap is not always the lie: it is often good advice, given one time too many. Suraphon and Pranee learned this firsthand, one day, with a pile of rice to sow standing between them and winter. Their story tells how, in trying too hard to do well, one can end up losing sight of what truly matters.

Once upon a time, in a distant land, at a time no one could date, there lived a family who had received a treasure. To us, this treasure would not be worth a second glance; we would walk past it without slowing our step. But for Suraphon, for Pranee his wife, and for their three eldest children, it was the most precious of treasures. Neither gold, nor diamonds, nor a house on the hill. A pile of rice. A pile of rice to sow.

For months, Suraphon, Pranee, and their children had worked the terraced rice paddies on the mountainside where they lived: digging, building stone walls, leveling the ground, lining the bottom of the basins with countless baskets of clay carried up from the ravine, so the water would not seep away, bringing water from the nearby torrent to the terraces, fencing them against wild buffalo and boar.

Only a few more days of work remained before they could sow, in the hope of a harvest that would feed the family through the winter, and perhaps leave a little extra to sell.

In the meantime, they had been entrusted with this great pile of rice to sow; it had to be kept safe from the weather, from birds, from pigs, from buffalo, until the terraces were ready.

An old man appeared one morning. Modest but clean clothing, a smile that reached all the way to his eyes; he resembled the images one imagines of wandering elders full of wisdom. The village dogs, usually placid, began growling for no reason as he passed; no one paid it any mind.

After the customary greetings, he asked about the worry weighing on Suraphon, and gave him this advice: "Build a raised granary, with a watertight roof, where you will store your rice safe from covetous eyes and from the rain. Let it be perfectly built."

Suraphon went to fetch bamboo and set to work. Pranee, seeing him plant the first posts, said: "One of us should stay near the pile while you build. I'll take care of it." The old man, who happened to be passing by, stepped in kindly: "Good wife, the rice is in no danger for now; the roof, though, needs thatch grass, alang-alang especially, and a great deal of it. Time presses more on that side." Pranee, finding the argument sound, went off with her eldest daughter to cut some.

When the platform was nearly finished, the old man returned, shook the six bamboo posts, and made them tremble: "The work is well done, but these bamboos, too thin, will not withstand a strong wind. Don't forget: after the sowing, you will store the harvest here. It must be sturdy." Suraphon could only agree, and set off again, with his younger son this time, to fetch thicker bamboo, far off, on the other side of the village. When he returned, the new posts planted, the wise man came back: "Good, but not planted deep enough; the weight of the rice will bring them down."

Suraphon uprooted them, dug deeper, wedged them with large stones; he sent his eldest son, with the buffalo, to fetch the necessary rocks.

The old man, still smiling, returned a third time: "The posts are well planted, but too short now; the floor will remain too low, the rice will not be safe from the animals nor from the monsoon rains."

This time, Suraphon went himself, a full day's journey, to fetch long, strong posts. On his return, he planted them, shook each one with all his strength, mimicking the fury of a storm, satisfied with how well they held; then he raised four walls of split, woven bamboo, and a light frame which he covered with several thick layers of alang-alang thatch.

When he stepped back to admire his work, the old man was already there: "It is well built, the posts are sturdy, the walls well woven, but why not seal the gaps with a little clay and sand? The insects will no longer get through, and your harvest will truly be protected."

Suraphon harnessed the buffalo and went to fetch the clay and sand needed; this time, it was Pranee and the three children who helped him seal the gaps in the woven walls, the clay as binder, the sand for the rest, from morning until evening.

All this time, no one had stayed by the pile of rice; each of them, in turn, had been called away for a reason that, at the moment, always seemed the best one. The wild boar, the buffalo, the birds of the area, however, had not missed their appointment. By the time the gaps in the walls were sealed, the great pile was no more than a small one, and it kept shrinking with every visit from the animals.

The wise old man with such sound advice was a phi, a mischievous spirit of the land, who had taken this form to keep Suraphon occupied without pause, and his family along with him, while the animals finished the work.

When our hero, deceived, had finished the sturdiest of granaries and discovered there was nothing left to store in it, the old man had these final words: "The work is well done; the posts are sturdy, the walls well sealed, the roof sound. But there is no more rice; in correcting every small detail, you lost what mattered most. You and your family will have to hire out your labor to others this winter. What a pity."

Suraphon understood, though a little late, why the village dogs had growled that first morning: they had sensed, before anyone else, the true nature of the old man, and he swore he would never be caught out again.

He sat for a long time before his empty granary. This moral, he repeated all his life to anyone who would listen: "The phi is in the details, and the best is the enemy of the good." For my part, humble storyteller, I say to you: "The false-ego often disguises itself to deceive us, and perfectionism, guilt, even zeal itself are among its favorite weapons against the true devotee."

For the false-ego, this misplaced consciousness, is cunning, and it is not for nothing that it is called, elsewhere, the Evil One. It does not always attack through lies; more often, it attacks through true reasons, put forward one after another, each reasonable, until what mattered most has disappeared without anyone seeing it go.

The false-ego readily speaks with the voice of modesty: "Am I worthy of meeting my creator, and what would he do with a soul like mine?" Notice: it speaks in the first person, as though it were you thinking it, when it is not you.

This does not mean one should stop thinking: for the affairs of the world, thought remains a valuable tool, but for the soul, another voice deserves to be heard first, the one we call the heart, which is none other than the soul itself. It does not speak in words; it recognizes the truth that is its source.

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