when he was wrong, and so he wanted his former teacher nearby to perform this function.

But even as the king's former teacher, Somdet Toh had to exercise tact and skill in criticizing the king.

One story tells that one day early in his reign, the king — and remember, he had been a monk for twenty-eight years — was sitting out on the boat landing in front of the palace drinking with his courtiers. So Somdet Toh came paddling across the river in a small boat. The king, displeased, said to him, "Here I've made you a Somdet. Don't you have any respect for your title? How can you paddle your own boat?" The Somdet replied, "When the king of the country is drinking in public, Somdets can paddlestand — except for one, a little canoe carrying a monkey tied to a leash with a sign on its back. The king's immediate reaction was anger: "Somebody's making fun of me." He had his officials check the roster to see which monastery was responsible for the boat, and it was Wat Rakhang, Somdet Toh's monastery.

So they took the sign off the monkey to see what it said. It said, "Willing to lose face in order to save cloth," which rhymed in Thai, but didn't make any more sense in Thai than it does in English. A few days later, the king invited Somdet Toh into the palace for a meal and a Dhamma talk, after which he asked him, "Suppose someone sponsored a boat with a sign