When the clergy is rocked by sex and financial scandals on a daily basis, while corruption and use of raw power and violence dominate both our politics and social life, authorities recommend prayer as a way to buck these trends.
I'm not joking. The guy in charge of this policy is deadly serious about it.
According to Amnart Buasiri, deputy director of the the National Office of Buddhism, society is in a huge mess. (Who can argue with him on that?) According to Mr Amnart, we need to produce "good people" to fight society's current ills, and we can attain this by making people pray more.
When I first saw his prayer policy in writing, I couldn't believe my eyes.
But let's give him a chance. Let's take a look at his plan to find out why he thinks prayer is the answer.
Prayer is actually not the only thing he has in mind. Apart from praying or meditating for at least 30 minutes a day, his recipe to produce good people includes making sure that they make their beds, clean up after themselves after using the toilet, observe frugality and orderliness in their dressing room, refrain from being wasteful in the dining room, and not let work pile up in the office.
What an eye for detail Mr Amnart has.
That's not all. He has designed a set of homework for "good people" to do every day. First, they must ask themselves what good deeds they have done that day and find ways to do more. Second, they must help with household chores. Third, they must be aware of what is going on in their community, the country and the world. And fourth, they must follow both domestic and international news.
This recipe will produce good people within one year, he promised. The second year will be used for monitoring and improving the scheme. By the third year, the process to produce good people will have taken deep root in society and become sustainable.
It's that simple. That easy. Why didn't we think about doing it before?
But Mr Amnart won't leave his brilliant plan to chance.
He believes an individual's practice will be become better if it is backed up by group support and incentives. This is his idea of how to do this: Team up as prayer groups to enter prayer contests at village, tambon, provincial and national levels. The contests can be divided into different categories; for example, for students, working people, and the elderly. The government should organise the contests and give big prizes for the winners to honour their prayer prowess.
He also proposed other programmes to strengthen public morality. They include the Five (Buddhist) Precepts Village Project (he didn't say how the Muslims and Christians would feel about this), the Land Guardians Project, the Volunteers to Rescue the Nation Project, and the Economic Prosperity to Promote Morality Project (I honestly don't know what it means).
Again, contests are Mr Amnart's way to make these projects expand nationwide over a short period of time. According to him, contests will be no longer necessary after the third year because, by then, everybody will already be good, moral, and public-minded.
If every sector follows his prayer recipe, and if the powers-that-be order their subordinates down the line to do it, he said there would an upsurge in good people. Peace, reconciliation, and prosperity will certainly follow suit.
All religions teach prayer to train and calm one's mind, he said. Regular prayers, apart from deepening one's faith, also improve the memory and strengthen concentration. Prayer also helps to cure people with short attention spans, he added. The contents of the prayers will also reiterate the teachings and strengthen one's morality.
I have no question about the power of prayer in calming the mind. But I think Mr Amnart still has a lot of explaining to do about why he thinks prayer is a cure-all for social ills. Monks pray several times a day, don't they? So how come the clergy is full of rogue monks?
After finishing reading Mr Amnart's prayer scheme which he devised quickly to please the military junta, initial disbelief turned into loss of hope. Maybe he is right. Given our situation now, maybe there's little we can do except pray.
Sanitsuda Ekachai is editorial pages editor, Bangkok Post.