ความเชื่อ khwam chuea (belief)

I try to compare belief to the wind: we can feel it, but we cannot see it. Like when the trees sway, when the breeze blows, we feel comfortable. It moves, but we don’t see it. Belief is the same.

And if we want to teach children, they must have belief. Belief is the anchor that makes people fear the supernatural. If there is no belief in a place—if people don’t believe—then they just do whatever they want.

If you observe, in many areas, in many villages, if there is no belief, then the question arises—without belief, without fear of what is left, what happens?

Belief may be just a teaching method of the old people. For example, they would say there is a spirit of the water, so don’t disturb the headwaters. If we cut the forest at the source of the stream, then we may not live happily, we may fall sick. Maybe that was just a teaching method of the old people. But in truth, if we cut the forest at the source, the water really will dry up. So maybe they called it a water spirit.

Or with the mountaintops—they would say don’t clear the very top. In swidden farming, people clear between the valley and the mountaintop, in the middle. That is one reason: if we clear the summit, leaves and seeds can only fall down, they cannot roll back up. Then the recovery of the soil and the land takes a very long time. But if we clear lower down, then seeds and leaves can still flow down into the field, and the land recovers.

So, people explained everything in terms of spirits and beliefs. And because of that, people developed fear and respect for the supernatural—things we cannot see.